


Pretty Young Thing

by SereneCalamity



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments (Movies), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Caring, F/M, Sassy!Clary, Student!Clary, Sugar Daddy!Jace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2020-02-07 08:52:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18617284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SereneCalamity/pseuds/SereneCalamity
Summary: Jace was eleven years older than Clary, but he made her insides feel all mushy and brought her the really expensive photography lights that she had been saving up for, so it wasn't really something she thought about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've said I would write this sort of story for a while, one with a bit of an age gap one, so here we go. I'd written several chapters, although I did tweak this one a bit after reading this other story, so partial credit to that! It's not edited at the moment, I'll come back and do that tomorrow. Also, this obviously is an age gap story, so if that's not something you're into, then probably not for you.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters.

Clarissa Fray let out a groan as she opened her eyes slowly.

The sun was really bright.

Why the  _fuck_  was the sun so bright?

She had closed her curtains before her and Isabelle Lightwood had gone to town.

She always closed her curtains before she went to town, because she was never in the right frame of mind to do it when she got back, and she knew how bad it was to wake up to the sun coming through the windows.

It was shit.

And it was shit now.

Clary attempted opening her eyes again, and there was a dark head on the pillow next to me.

One; it was a white pillow—stark white, as in, it looked as though it was regularly washed and probably soaked in, like, fabric softener, because the pillow under Clary's head was really soft as well.

Clary was pretty sure there wasn't a single piece of white bedding in their entire apartment.

Or, there might have been at one stage, but they would definitely not be white now.

Two; she didn't usually go for dark haired guys, and also...Long hair. Really long. A little long was okay, maybe even shoulder length, but this hair was so long it disappeared under the blanket.

Three; the sheets were really cozy. And the blanket. And the pillows.

Expensive feeling.

She frowned after staring at the head next to her for a few more beats, before lifting up the blanket to look underneath, and then she realized that it was actually  _Izzy_  in bed next to her. That was okay. That was a relief. Her and Izzy slept in bed together a lot, so that was fine. She adored Izzy, and they cuddled a lot when they slept together, and Clary liked cuddles, especially when she was drunk.

Although usually they weren't together in some randoms house.

Clary looked at herself, noted that she was still wearing her underwear, which was great, although she was wearing a light blue v-neck. The shirt was obviously from someone bigger than her, because it was nearly double her size, but it was nice and soft. After glancing around the room, and noting that there were curtains, and they were pulled, but there was a little gap, which was where the sun was coming through. There were side tables that were not scratched at all, and looked as though they were cleaned regularly, because there was no dust on top, and there was a painting on the wall opposite her and a shelf with a few books.

It was a nice room.

It didn't belong to any of Clary's friends, that was for certain, and it wasn't Izzy's parents house, because when they ended up there, they ended up in Izzy's old room, which had blue walls and old glow-in-the dark stickers on the ceiling. And anyway, they only ended up hungover at Izzy's place when they were on the other side of the city at house parties, but they had been in  _town_  last night.

Clary sat up slowly, her head spinning, and she closed her eyes as the pain subsided and then turned to put her feet on the ground.

Wooden.

Shiny.

Cold.

Nice.

Her thoughts were coming out almost like a caveman, which wasn't great, it meant that she had probably let Izzy talk her into doing some flaming shots last night.

That was never a good idea.

Clary finally stood up, slowly curling her toes, flexing her legs, rolling her shoulders and then reaching her arms upward. There were a few pops and cracks as she arched her back and then she let her arms fall back at her side with a small smile on her face.

When it came to mornings, there really wasn't much that was as good as a stretch when she had just woken up, other than maybe waking up to a morning orgasm, or leftover pizza from the night before, especially after a night of drinking.

Clary got up and tried to remember how they ended up back at this place last night. Things were a little fuzzy, but as she started thinking about it a bit harder, she remembered them figuring out how much it would cost to get an uber back to their apartment because they had ended up a little further into town than they expected. And then Izzy had said that she would call her cousin, because he had just moved back into the city and he stayed up all hours of the night, so she would see if he could come and get them. Then Izzy had called him and walked off for a bit to find somewhere quiet to speak, and  _that_  was when the flaming shots had come into it.

" _Fuck_ ," Clary hissed.

The flaming shots had been  _her_  idea.

Clary glanced around, and honestly? She couldn't remember getting here last night. She definitely didn't remember undressing and then getting into someone elses shirt, and then she wondered where her clothes were. As she looked around, there weren't any clothes on the ground, or on the chair in the corner of the room. There were no shoes there either.

Maybe their heels would have scratched up the wooden floors?

Clary vaguely remembered being impressed by a black and green car that looked as though it cost triple what she had ever earned in her life time, and then some golden haired guy trying to help her into the back of the car, and he had even stood in front of the door with his arms kind of out, to stop her from flashing the people on the side walk.

She walked out to the hallway and glanced around, and it became clear very quickly that they were actually in a  _house_  as opposed to an apartment. The wooden floors were polished and shiny, and there was another painting hanging on the wall that she actually thought was pretty good, before she turned to walk toward the right, since the left let straight down into a bedroom, where she could see a perfectly made, four-poster bed. Her eyes widened as she got to the end of the hall, which opened out to a lounge, dining room and kitchen.

It was gorgeous.

It was, like, a proper, adult house.

And there were windows lining one wall, and it was clear they were on a hill  _and_  in an expensive neighborhood, because when Clary looked through the window, there were fancy houses all around them and they had a good view over the city. The furniture all looked nice and new and well looked after and the TV was  _huge_. As Clary looked around, taking in the lounge, and then the dining room and then the kitchen, she jerked a little in surprise as she saw someone standing there, a cup in his hand and a newspaper spread out on the island in the the middle of the kitchen.

The golden haired guy.

Shit, he was pretty.

"Hi," Clary began cautiously.

"Morning," he smiled at her gently, and put down his mug. "Did you want coffee?" Clary's eyes widened and then she let out a groan.

"Oh my fucking god,  _yes_ ," she nodded her head a few times before groaning and closing her eyes. "I shouldn't have done that," she muttered.

"Yeah, you were pretty...Inebriated last night," he agreed as he walked over to the coffee maker, that was still full. Clary stayed where she was for a moment before coming walking toward the kitchen table, which wasn't too far from the kitchen. She pulled out a chair and then turned around, sliding her ass onto the table and bringing her legs up to rest on the chair. It was a nice chair.

Dark wood.

Wood.

That really seemed to be a thing for this guy.

Wood and glass, based on the big windows.

It was pretty classy.

The opposite of what Clary looked like right now.

She didn't even want to see what she looked like now.

"Sugar and milk?" The guy asked.

"Milk and...Three sugars. Do you have brown sugar? That's always better," Clary replied, pushing her hair out of her face. She still had her rings on from last night, she pulled one off slightly to look underneath and she noted there was a red dent into one side of her finger, from where she must have been pressing down on the finger where she slept. She made a face and then slid the ring back up and wished that she had elastic to put in her hair and pin it back.

"Who says brown sugar is better?" The guy asked with an amused smile, but he was walking to the big pantry and pulling it open. Even from where Clary sitting, she could see that everything was strangely in perfect lines.

Organised probably was the word, not strangely, but given nothing in Clary's apartment was organised, not even Simon Lewis' room, and he was the tidiest one in the apartment.

"Everyone.  _Everyone_  knows that brown sugar is better," Clary replied, and that was honestly a bit of an odd question. The guy didn't look like he believed her entirely, but then he was coming over to her, and that was the first time that Clary saw him properly. Her vision wasn't the best, especially when she didn't have her glasses on. Or contacts. But she didn't wear her contacts when she went into town, or her glasses, because she could still see, and she didn't want to lose either of them.

He was  _really_  pretty.

Fucking gorgeous, if she was being honest.

A bit older, but not heaps.

And he was dressed  _really_  well.

Even though it was early morning on a  _Sunday_.

"Why are you dressed in a suit?" She asked, her upper lip curling. "Have you got a wedding or something?" He looked down at himself and let out a laugh, shaking his head before taking a few steps back to pick up the coffee he had put down on the counter top. Instead of moving back around to the other side where he had been reading his paper, though, he leaned slightly against the counter top behind him and lifted his coffee to take a sip. He wasn't wearing a full suit, just the pants and fancy black shoes and a light purple shirt and a tie. But he would have a jacket, he definitely looked like the kind of guy who brought the whole thing together, not in pieces, one at a time.

Clary glanced to the side, to the end of the table, and over the back of the chair at the end, was a black, suit jacket.

She smirked as she took a sip of her coffee.

"Holy shit," she moaned, closing her eyes and tipping her head back and gave a little wiggle. When she had said there wasn't anything good about mornings other than stretching, orgasms and pizza, she had forgotten about coffee. Good, fresh coffee. "Holy shit, this is amazing." She opened her eyes back up and the guy opposite her was looking her with a strange expression, lips pursed together and eyes looking a few shade darker than they had a minute ago. "So?" Clary arched an eyebrow. "What's with the suit?" The guy blinked and his expression shifted a bit.

"Work," he replied.

"Work?" Clary made a face. "It's Sunday."

"I'm aware of that," he answered dryly and Clary just shook her head and sipped from her coffee again. She moaned again, but not quite as loud, and the guy straightened up, swallowing the rest of his coffee and moving to the sink. He actually washed it straight away, which was something Clary  _never_  did. Sometimes she would rinse it, but not properly wash.

"So you're Izzy's cousin, right?" She continued. He turned back to face her, and he actually looked a little worried, eyebrows pulling together.

"Are you saying you don't know who I am?" He asked.

"Well, I remember Izzy saying she would call her cousin to pick her up, and I kind of remembered a golden haired hottie helping me into a car and then I woke up here with Izzy. So I'm guessing you're that guy," Clary shrugged.

"Did you know that when you woke up?" He still had a worried expression on his face.

"Nah," she shrugged a shoulder again and he looked at her, as though he was about to say something, but then Izzy was coming into the room. She'd pulled the blanket off the top of the bed and wrapped it around her, which was a good idea, because Clary's ass was kind of cold sitting directly on thet table. Although Clary had noticed the guys eyes dip to her legs a few times throughout their conversation, so actually, she didn't care.

"Hey!" Izzy's voice was too perky for someone who had gone out last night, but the girl never had hangovers.

It was fucking unfair.

She also had an elastic for her hair.

"You got another elastic?" Clary asked hopefully and Izzy shook her head as she walked over, pressing a kiss to Clary's cheek. "Bitch," Clary muttered, eyeing the elastic that was holding Izzy's hair up, wondering if she could talk her friend into giving it to her since her hair was a little sleeker and easier to manage than Clary's.

"Slag," Izzy replied with a smirk, getting up on the table with her and tightening the blanket around her shoulders. The guy in the kitchen was watching them with a small smile on his face. "So, Jace! This is my Clary. Clary, this is Jace, my cousin."

"Nice to officially meet you," Jace nodded at her, and his smile grew. Clary smiled back at him, tilting her head to the side. He was really well dressed, and when he had come over to her, he had smelt good as well, just subtle, definitely cologne as opposed to some cheap spray. He was wearing a watch, which was weird, because who wore a watch these days when they could just check on their phone, but it was an expensive looking watch. His hair was a little shaggy, he had bright gold eyes, full lips and a strong jaw.

He was really hot.

And rich, it appeared.

Clary raised her eyebrows as he walked back over the coffee machine to get a cup for Izzy, and her eyes dropped to his ass. His pants were clearly tailored because that ass...That was a nice ass, and the pants showed it off perfectly. She sucked the corner of her lower lip into her mouth as he reached forward, his pants stretching a little, and she tilted her head to the side to take it all in. She bet it would look even better out of the pants, but right now, she was happy with her view. When he turned back around, Jace's eyes were on her straight away, and he seemed to know what she had been looking at as he gave her another small smile.

Looking a little amused.

Like he had before.

Clary stared back, not at all embarassed, her smile changing to a smirk.

"I need to get into work," Jace said. "I'll give you a ride home."

"Did you have our clothes for us?" Clary asked she slid down off the table, the hem of the shirt she was wearing falling down to thigh length, and she his eyes dip down to look at her legs. She shifted one of her feet, so that they were parted, and she saw them dip down a little further. She remembered getting changed in the bathroom last night into clothes that her and Izzy had raided from the drawers last night, and they must have just left them on the ground in there. Maybe. She wasn't sure.

"Yes. There's more clothes in the bedroom, just grab whatever you what to wear home. I washed your clothes last night, and put them in the dryer, so I'll go get them. Your bags are still in the bathroom from where you left them last night, so I'll grab them too," he told them, although he was only looking at Clary. She quirked an eyebrow before turning around, and Izzy practically had her face shoved into the mug of coffee. Clary understood.

It was really good coffee.

Jace left the room, and as he walked away, Clary's eyes were on his ass again. She only looked away when he disappeared from view and she looked back at Izzy.

"I don't remember much of last night after the flaming shots," she stated and Izzy grinned.

"Before we went to sleep last night, you said you wanted to climb my cousin like a tree," she responded and Clary let out a laugh.

"Drunk Clary knows her shit," she replied and Izzy laughed again, rolling her eyes as she finished her coffee. "Coz he is pretty." She finished off her coffee as well and went into the kitchen, putting it in the sink.

Jace had brought their clothes out and put them on the table while Izzy and Clary were in his bedroom getting changed. Izzy tied one of the shirts up in a knot under her breasts to make it look a little more fitted, but Clary didn't bother.

She was comfortable in an oversized pair of Jace's sweatpants and the blue v-neck she had on with no bra, since she hadn't worn it with her dress last night.

Maybe she looked a little the trashy stoner in their apartment building, but she was cute, she could pull it off.

Jace had his jacket on when Clary and Izzy came back out, and he was running a hand through his hair, leaving it a little ruffled. Clary watched him from behind, and she couldn't help but think that his shoulders filled out the shoulders really well. He waited for them while holding open the front door, and locked the door behind them once they had gone through. His car was parked out the front and Clary let out a whistle.

"Nice," she murmured.

"You did the exact same thing last night," Jace noted as he opened the passenger side door and then pressed the lever that drew the seat forward so that Clary could climb in the back. Once she had, he moved the seat back and Isabelle got in the front.

On the way home, Clary caught Jace looking at her in the rearview mirror.

Not heaps, like some creepy guys on the bus, but just a couple of times like the hot senior with the big blue eyes last year who came into the photography lab.

When they got back to their apartment building, Jace waited as they got out of the car, and being out in the sun really started messing with Clary's head again, even after her morning coffee. She was pretty sure it was still really early, even though Jace had been all ready to go to work, but her phone was dead, so she couldn't check the time.

Maybe that was why Jace had a watch, she thought idly, in case his phone died.

But a guy who worked on a Sunday and washed and dried their clothes this morning, didn't seem like the kind of guy who would let his phone run out of charge.

"See you next time, Clary," Jace called out, and she blinked as she focused back on him.

"Next time," she gave a wiggle of her fingers and he smiled back, before indicating to pull out into the traffic and then accelerating away. Clary let out a sigh as she turned back to Izzy.

"I want to climb your cousin like a tree," she repeated her drunken testament, and Izzy snorted before grabbing her arm and pulling her into the apartment building.

She was  _definitely_  going to be thinking about Jace later on tonight when her head wasn't so sore.

Still with the tie, but maybe without the rest of his clothes.


	2. Chapter 2

Mondays were the worst.

Tuesdays were only slightly better.

Wednesday actually wasn't bad because Clary only had classes until eleven thirty, and then she was out for the rest of the day. Sometimes she would pick up extra shifts at the photography lab, but that wasn't the case this week, so she just went back to her apartment, made herself some ramen and then sat down on one of the couches in the lounge.

It was an old couch, one that dipped down a little at the back given how many times Jordan Kyle had fallen asleep on it, but it was comfortable, and Clary finished her noodles and pulled one of the blankets from the back of the couch, and wrapped it around herself. The dip at the back of the couch made it cosier when snuggling down, because it felt as though the couch was trying to wrap her up, and so it wasn't to surprising when Clary fell asleep.

She didn't wake up until there was talking in the kitchen behind her, but even then, she didn't bother opening her eyes.

Jordan, Izzy and Simon had all seen her in worse states than drooling on the couch cushions, so she didn't rush to wake up.

Except when one of the voices distinctively did not sound like any of her room mates, she popped up, her hair messy around her head.

"Ah, she's awake!" Izzy teased from where she was sitting on top of the kitchen table. Next to her was...Her cousin. Jace. The gorgeous one. Clary struggled to sit up properly, shoving her hand through her hair and trying to tame it down.

Ick.

And she'd fallen asleep with her contacts in.

She blinked a couple of times and there wasn't much discomfort, so she ignored it.

"Hey!" Clary greeted them as she got up from the couch and straightened out the shirt she was wearing. "Welcome to our humble abode," she waved a hand around the living room and Jace gave her a crooked smile that was completely adorable. She joined Izzy on the table top and Jace raised an eyebrow.

"Is this a habit you guys are into? Sitting on tables rather than at them?" He asked.

"It's not like we ever really eat at the table," Izzy shrugged. And it was kind of clear that they didn't, because the table was covered in papers and magazines and Simon's laptop was there, and a bottle of water and half a pack of crisps that Clary was actually pretty sure had been there since last week, just none of them had cleared them away. "Jace wanted to know if we wanted to go to a basketball game with him, he got tickets through work."

"How many tickets?" Clary asked with a purse of her lips.

"Uh, a few," Jace replied.

"So Alec and Mags are coming?"

"Already invited them," Jace told her.

"Aw, so we were your  _second_  stop then?" Clary teased lightly and Jace just smiled back at her, not appearing fazed by her flirting. "Enough for Jordan and Simon to come?"

"Yeah, that's no problem," Jace nodded and Clary was surprised. They were coming up to the finals of basketball season and tickets were expensive. Not that Clary knew much about basketball, she just liked going to have fun, but there had been some guys talking about it in one of the cafeteria's at college.

"Sounds fun," Izzy grinned and Jace smiled at both of them, but mainly at Clary.

It was  _definitely_  mainly at her.

"Did you want to stay for dinner?" Clary asked impulsively.

"What's for dinner?" Jace asked curiously and Clary and Izzy glanced at each other.

"Well, if we have guests...Pizza," Izzy stated.

"And if you didn't have guests?" Jace arched an eyebrow.

"Leftover Chinese from last night," Clary shrugged. "And if there's not enough, we've got Froot Loops." Jace actually looked a little disgusted but also amused, and he didn't say anything. Izzy got off the table to see what else they had in the cupboards, and Jace started talking to her, and Clary just tilted her head to the side as she looked at Jace's profile.

He was wearing pressed slacks again, and damn, they did things to his ass.

She wasn't sure she was ever going to get over his ass.

Thank fuck he had moved into the city, and hopefully she would get to see a whole lot more of it.

"You guys don't have any fruit or vegetables in here," Jace noted as he looked over Izzy's shoulder and into the fridge. "You don't actually have much in here at all." Clary rolled her eyes, because Jace sounded like her mum. "Anyway, I actually have a meeting in about an hour that I need to get to, but rain check."

"You want a rain check on pizza and Froot Loops?" Clary teased lightly and Jace straightened up from where he had been looking in the fridge.

"Rain check on dinner with you, yes," he answered and Clary felt a squeeze in her stomach. Izzy looked between them with a smirk and then shut the door.

* * *

Clary looked pretty cute in her outfit, if she did say so herself. A crop top and jeans, her hair in double Dutch braids over each of her shoulders and a cap on her head. Simon was the only one of them that had a car, so he drove them close to the venue and then they parked and caught the bus the rest of the way so that they didn't get trapped in too much traffic. Magnus Bane and Alexander Lightwood were meeting them there with Jace, who had the tickets, and Clary didn't have a choice but to just grip Izzy's hand and let her friend drag her through the crowds of people because she was tiny and she couldn't see much in the crowds of people.

"There they are!" Jordan called out over his shoulder and Izzy and Clary followed after him, Simon just behind them. Clary saw Magnus first, and she let go of Izzy's hand to throw her arms around the Indonesian man. He laughed as he gave her a squeeze.

"Hey, biscuit!" He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. When she pulled away, she saw Alec behind him, and then Jace.

Looking a whole goddamn snack.

She stepped back so that Magnus could hug Izzy and the others, and then stepped forward to hug Alec and then grin up at Jace.

"Good seeing you again," she told him and he smiled back at her, not saying anything. He was introduced to Simon and Jordan and then they joined the queues that were heading into the venue. Part of Clary wanted to be standing next to Jace, maybe see if she could bump up alongside him a couple of times, but then Izzy grabbed her hand and Magnus was on the other side and she got swept up in the energetic buzz. Izzy wanted to get food, which was going to completely blow her food budget for the entire week, and Clary figured she could just steal from the others if they chose to get food as well.

The seats were pretty good. They weren't courtside, but they were close.

"So do you actually know what's going on here?" Clary whispered to Magnus and he grinned and threw an arm around her.

"I'm just here to watch the beautiful, sweaty men run around in tiny shorts," he replied and Clary laughed and nudged him in the side with her elbow, wiggling her eyebrows in agreement.

She actually forgot about the fact that Jace was only a few seats over, getting swept up in the crowd and the game that she wasn't actually following but was more than happy to stand up and scream with when their team scored. Izzy was on one side and Magnus was on the other, and she always had a good time when she was with them. They were all sort of on the same level, and they kind of vibed off each other.

It was at half time that their group all kind of shuffled a little. Simon and Magnus needed to go to the bathroom, Izzy had managed to talk Alec into buying her something else to eat, so they wandered off, which just left Jace, Clary and Jordan.

Jordan was completely absorbed in his phone, probably in another fight with his boyfriend, because that happened a lot, so Clary turned to Jace, tipping her head to the side and blinking her long eyelashes at him, wetting her lips with her tongue.

He noticed.

She saw the way his eyes fixed on hers, then on her mouth, before lifting back up again.

Clary patted the seat next to her and Jace let out a short laugh before moving over to sit in the seat next to her. He was dressed in a nice pair of jeans and a light blue v-neck short sleeved shirt that clung to his biceps and showed off his slim waist. There were a pair of sunglasses in his hair and Clary reached up and plucked them off his head, studying them.

"Do you think...If I sold this pair of glasses..." she began with a little smirk. "That I could pay the rent for the month?" She arched an eyebrow at him and Jace rolled his eyes, giving her a  _look_ , but he didn't try to take the glasses back.

"I don't think the  _whole_  month," Jace replied and Clary grinned.

"But at least  _part_  of the month?" She said knowingly as she turned the glasses to the side and caught a glimpse of a little gold scrawl on the inside. "These are Cartier?" She asked, her eyes nearly bulging out of her head.

She had thought they would be expensive.

But she imagined that Cartier would be even more.

"Shit," she whistled through her teeth, and then slipped the sunglasses up her nose. Jace watched her, smiling, and Clary took in a deep breath, savouring the moment. "This will undoubtedly be the most expensive item I will ever wear, so I just want to enjoy it." Jace let out a laugh, and tipped his head toward her.

"They look good on you," he said and Clary grinned.

"Damn right they do," she responded, and Jace looked a little surprised by that and he let out another laugh. From the way that Clary was now sitting, turned so that she was facing toward Jace, their knees were pressed together. Clary was  _very_  aware of the warmth against her leg, and she moved slightly forward in the seat, just so they were pressed more firmly together. Jace seemed to notice, but he didn't say anything. "So...Are you super into basketball? Is that why you have these seats?"

"No, I got offered the tickets from a friend," Jace shrugged. "He's a client as well, so these were thrown in with a job that we're doing for him at the moment."

"Shit," Clary's eyes widened behind the sunglasses that she was seriously considering stealing. But...Not to sell and pay her rent. Just to keep. "I should get into your line of business." Jace grimaced a little, and then he leaned forward and slid the glasses down her nose. But he didn't take them off her, just pushed them up so that they were on top of her head, and she was glad that she had taken her cap off, because Jace's fingers brushed over one of her braids, touching the curve of her ear before letting his hand fall back to his side.

"No, you shouldn't," he replied. "You would be wasted in a place like mine."

"You don't enjoy what you do?" Clary asked, arching an eyebrow.

"No,  _I_  do. But it's my company. I get to choose what I work on, delegate the rest. You deserve to work on something that you're passionate about," he told her and Clary couldn't stop her smile. Although it wasn't as big and flirty as her other ones, it was smaller, because that sentiment had just sounded...Really nice. "So what are you studying?"

"Photography," Clary told him. "Minoring in art history."

"Nice," Jace smiled at her. "Are you good at it?"

" _Yes_ ," Clary narrowed her eyes slightly, as though taking offence, and Jace let out a laugh.

"I was just asking!" He protested lightly, still laughing, but holding his hands up, palm outwards, showing that he didn't mean to offend. Clary's forehead smoothed out, her eyes not narrow anymore, rolling them at him. She was about to reply when people around them suddenly started talking louder and turning around to look at them. Clary frowned, and Jace glanced around, before they realized why the attention of practically the  _entire_  arena was on them.

The Kiss Cam.

"Oh god," Clary let out a laugh, her cheeks warming up as she stared up a the screens with her face and Jace's plastered over them, red love hearts surrounding them. She looked toward Jace, who was just grinning at her, eyes dancing. She could vaguely hear the commentators cheering them on, but her entire focus was on Jace and his mouth. He was saying something as well, but she couldn't actually hear, and so...She just leaned in.

Jace's mouth was soft against hers, but they were firm, and within a second, his hand had come up and was cupping her face, his thumb against her cheek and his fingers reached out for her jaw, gently but firmly holding her in place. Clary's whole body felt as though it was melting into Jace as his tongue pressed against her lips and his head tilted to the side, making the angle better. As his tongue touched Clary's, she shivered and one of her hands moved to rest on his his knee, her fingers curling into the denim, and the tip of his tongue flicked against the roof of her mouth. His kiss wasn't controlling, but it was definitely  _in_  control.

Her eyes were bleary when they pulled apart, and she took in a sharp breath through her nose.

Jace wasn't smiling, and he wasn't frowning, his face was just soft, and he leaned forward to press a last kiss against the tip of her nose.

It was endearing and so fucking cute, and Clary didn't even know how to respond.

His hand moved from her face and he looked back up at the screen to see that it had moved onto it's next victims. Jordan had seen the kiss and was grinning at them and when Clary lifted her head, she saw Simon and Magnus coming back. Magnus raised his eyebrow at the fact that Jace was now in his seat, but he didn't say anything. When Isabelle and Alec had gotten back, Alec had brought two extra lots of curly fries and Clary cheered, reaching past Jace to snag the cardboard box and shoved her hand into it.

"You want some?" Clary asked as half was finished, holding the fries up in front of Jace's face. He looked at them, and she  _swore_  that she could see in his face that she wanted some, but he shook his head.

"No, I'm good, thanks," Jace replied with a small smile. Clary nodded and quickly looked away, feeling something like a lump in her throat, and it wasn't the curly fries, but she shoved some more into her mouth to distract her.

Jace was a good kisser.

Of course he was.

He  _looked_  like he was a good kisser.

Clary hadn't been following the game very closely  _anyway_ , but now she was paying even less attention than she had in the first half. She practically shoveled the fries into her mouth to keep her hands busy, and once she was finished, her fingers bounced against her knees, nervous energy racing through her body. She cheered when the rest of her friends did and she looked at the particularly cute guy on the court with curly hair when Magnus reached over and jabbed her in the shoulder, pointing at the guy. Jace got into the game, he twitched and jumped and cheered with actual purpose, rather than just following the crowd, and it was...Attractive to watch.

Plus, there was one time where he actually jumped to his feet and fist pumped the air and his sleeves got really tight around his biceps.

That was nice.

After the game finished, there was practically a stampede to get out of the arena. Izzy grabbed Clary's hand, fingers curling around hers so that they didn't loose one another in the crowd, and Simon and Jace walked behind the girls, sheltering them from at least part of the pushing people. At one stage, Clary felt a hand against her hip, and she knew it was Jace, even though she didn't turn around to look.

"Alright," Alec stopped once they were outside, and found a small spot where they weren't getting pushed around against the wall. "We're heading that way," Alec nodded his head to the right.

"Our stop is back that way," Simon jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the other direction. Alec nodded, leaning in to give his sister a hug goodbye, and then Clary. Jace held back, a small smile on his face, and it was definitely directed at Clary. She felt strangely subdued, which was unusual for her, but her insides were in knots, and her lips were still tingling and that place where he had touched her hip felt as though he had left a brand against her skin. He didn't hug her goodbye, which she was hoping for, but she waved at him and he gave her this small smile that felt weirdly intimate, even though they were in a big crowd of people.

"Didn't know you had a thing for older guys," Jordan commented with a grin on the bus back to where they were parked.

"Everyone's into older guys," Izzy replied, not looking up from her phone and Jordan raised an eyebrow before looking at Clary.

"Even when the older guy is your cousin?" Jordan prompted and Simon frowned, looking between Izzy and Clary and then Izzy's head came up.

"What?"

"I meant Clary," Jordan grinned. "Clary's into older guys." Izzy glanced at her best friend and shrugged. "And the older guy is your cousin," he reiterated, and Izzy's lips parted.

" _What_?" She repeated.

"It was just the Kiss Cam," Clary reasoned but Izzy's grin was spreading across her face.

"You kissed my cousin?" She asked.

"It was the Kiss Cam!" Clary protested again and Izzy let out a laugh.

"Nice. You  _did_ say you were checking him out. And I saw you guys the other day in the apartment, giving each other weird eyes," Izzy was still grinning, so that was a good sign. "Anyway, you're a massive step up from his ex, even if it was just a kiss," she nudged Clary in the side before looking back down at her phone. Simon and Jordan got distracted by something outside and started talking, and Clary licked her lips quickly before pushing her hair behind her ear.

"His ex?" She said, feigning nonchalance.

"Yeah, she was a bitch," Izzy replied, eyes still on her phone. "Like, I can see why they got together, because he can be fucking uptight as well, but she was worse," she finally looked up, screwing up her nose. "There was one Christmas when she got angry that Jace wouldn't take a call at dinner, because it was apparently some big firm in China that he was working with. She kept saying it was such a big deal and he should just take the call, and then she got pissy when he stayed at the table."

"Eesh," Clary made a face.

"Yeah," Izzy shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know why they were together so long, but he's out now, so that's all that matters. He's not seeing anyone, as far as I know."

Well...At least she knew for certain that he was single.

Or at least, as far as Izzy knew, and that was a lot, to be fair.

She would keep that in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think x


	3. Chapter 3

Usually waking up on a Tuesday was pretty shit. It was only a little bit better than a Monday, and really not by much, because her first class was at nine, whereas her Monday class was at eight-thirty, and Monday was also  _Monday_ , so it was automatically worse than every other day of the week.

But this particular Tuesday, she woke up with a text from an unknown number.

Clary tapped her thumb against the side of her phone, looking down at the message on her screen. It was a simple message, with a simple question, and it was something that she had been asked a hundred times before and she wasn't sure why it was making her stomach do back flips and her heart beat faster in her chest.

**_Hi, Clary. It's Jace. I really enjoyed spending time with you the other day. Did you want to go out for coffee?_ **

It had all the proper punctuation and everything in it, and Clary wasn't even the slightest bit surprised. She spelled out everything correctly now, given her iPhone's auto-correct, so it wasn't like high school and her old phone when everything was short hand and pretty tacky, if she did say so herself, but she didn't generally add commas and everything into her texts.

Her reply was simple though, didn't require punctuation.

_YES_

She licked her tongue over her lips, wiggled around on her mattress for a few minutes while she waited for a reply, and then lost patience and threw back her blankets, getting out of bed and feeling stupidly energetic for eight o'clock in the morning. She threw on a pair of jeans and a bright pink singlet and then looked around for her hair brush. Clary grabbed her phone and shoved it into one of her pockets and then left her room, going into Isabelle's room next door, which was still dark and Isabelle was still motionless in her bed.

"Iz! Move your ass! And I need to use your brush!" Clary didn't bother trying to keep noise down as she tripped over a pair of high heels in the middle of the floor, and then Isabelle's fucking laptop, because she always left it charging, strewn across the floor. She'd already had to replace two chargers already from them being broken when tripped over and ripped out of the laptop or wall at awkward angles. Clary managed to find Isabelle's hair brush in the mess on top of her drawer and then she turned to look at Isabelle.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays they went into uni together, so Isabelle should be getting up around now. Clary smirked and jumped onto the bed, shaking her arms and legs and Isabelle finally made a noise, groaning and trying to get her arms out from where Clary had them pinned at her side.

"Why the  _fuck_  do you have so much energy?" Isabelle groaned, her voice choked with sleep. "Get the  _fuck_  off me!" Clary grinned and just shook the bed some more. "Oh my god—okay, I'm awake! Fucking hell, just get  _off_!" Clary flopped to the side, laying between Isabelle and the wall, and pulled her phone out again.

Still no texts back.

It had been about all of fifteen minutes, but...She was still impatient.

"I've got a date," Clary whispered.

"Good for you," Isabelle muttered, not sounding like she wanted to discuss it.

"You wanna know who with?" Clary asked.

"Don't give a shit," Isabelle grunted and Clary rolled her eyes.

"I'll let you have the last muffin in the cupboard if you pay me attention," Clary poked Isabelle in the side, through the blankets and Isabelle grumbled again, but she poked her head out from underneath her blankets and looked over at Clary with narrow eyes.

"Go and get me the muffin first,  _then_  I'll pay you attention," she bargained roughly and Clary grinned.

"Deal."

* * *

Clary didn't get a reply from Jace in her first class, or when she was in the photography lab until lunch, or when she was rushing to eat the pizza slice she had picked up from one of the cafeteria, or in her next two classes. It wasn't until she wasn't heading back to the photography lab, this time for her shift, that her phone vibrated and she pulled it out of her pocket and it was actually a text from the person that she had been waiting for.

**_Sorry, Clary. Todays been crazy. I was going to ask if you wanted to meet up today, but it's a bit late now. Does tomorrow work?_ **

Clary pouted as she looked down at her phone, because she would have made today work. She had work now, but it was only until seven, that left the whole evening ahead. It wasn't unusual for them to go out drinking or to an impromptu party or even just to a late movie and then dinner with friends afterward that meant they didn't get back to their apartment until two in the morning. She didn't care how late it meant they went and got this coffee, she just wanted it to happen.

But Jace was...Like, a proper adult, and he worked full time, and on a  _Sunday_ , so he probably had, like, a nine o'clock bed time or something.

_Perf. You wanna meet up somewhere or..._

Clary reached the lab and tugged open the door, grinning over at Helen Blackthorn who was already there. Helen rolled her eyes from where she was helping one of the freshman students, and had probably been there for a while, judging by the exasperated look on her face. On Tuesday, Helen and Clary's shift overlapped by a few hours, which was one of the best shifts of Clary's week. As she was putting her bag down behind one of the desks and pulling out her old laptop, her phone vibrated again.

**_I have a meeting until twelve-thirty. I could pick you up around one? Or if you wanted to meet me at my office at twelve-thirty, that works as well._ **

Clary bit down on her lower lip as she thought about it. On one hand, she would one hundred and ten percent be down for Jace picking her up in that beautiful car that she had only been in twice, once when drunk and the other while hungover, she would also be interested to see where Jace worked. And it meant that she would be able to see him earlier, because she could leave straight after classes, which finished at eleven-thirty for her, and go straight to his office.

_I'll come to you. What's your address_

Another reply came within a couple of minutes and Clary typed it into a Safari page and noted that she was actually pretty sure where the building itself was, so that wouldn't be too hard to find. Then another message came through.

**_Are you in class?_ **

Clary tapped out a reply.

_Nah at work now_

**_Where do you work?_ **

_At the photography lab on campus. Means I get first dibs on reserving the good photo lights and dark room time so it's good_

**_Don't you have your own photo lights?_ **

_Nah. Too expensive. Got some cheap ones I use when I can't get the good ones but they're getting old. Saving up for some new ones but I'll probably need to get a new laptop first_

It wasn't like she  _needed_  new photo lights when she could reserve them for use through the photo lab, and like she had just said to Jace, working at the lab meant that she could write her name down in the slots to reserve the lights whenever she needed them. But her laptop was still the same one that she had been using since she was in high school, and it hadn't even been new  _then_. It was starting to glitch a bit, and it had slowed all the way down in the past couple of months and now she was using Jordan and Isabelle's when she could to run her editing program.

**_Isn't a good laptop gold to college students?_ **

_Unfortunately this college student don't got gold to get a good laptop_

"I swear to god," Helen groaned as she came over to where Clary was sitting. "I'm gonna fucking kill the next freshman who doesn't know how to install shit on their laptop. That's not  _our_  job. That's, like, IT's or something." Clary made a face, because it was something that they dealt with a lot. "Anyway, who are you texting you? You're smiling like a dick."

"Aren't you fucking lovely?" Clary grunted and jabbed her elbow into Helen's side and the blonde grinned. She looked back down at her phone but there weren't any more messages from Jace, so she put her phone on the desk and pushed it away. "Did you want to go out this weekend? I think we're gonna go out on Friday night."

"Ooh, yeah, I'm in," Helen wiggled her eyebrows. "As long as there's no flaming shots. I'm pretty sure you were half a second off being comatose the other night we went out." Clary made a face and Helen grinned, before her own phone went off, and the blonde looked down. Her grin shifted to a softer smile and Clary raised an eyebrow enquiringly.

"Who's that?" She sung out, nudging Helen's arm. "Another one of your  _dates_?" Helen didn't just work at the photography lab. She also went out on, delicately putting it,  _dates_  with older people. She was a _Sugar Baby_ , as she put it. Clary found the whole thing fascinating, but while the money appealed to her, she honestly didn't think she was the type of person who could feign interest in someone that she really didn't want to spend time with. But Helen was sweet and funny and apparently she was good at what she did because she always had people messaging her, and she went out a couple nights a week, from what Clary knew.

The money wasn't just for her, though, like Clary's money was. Helen's mother had died a couple of years ago, after being sick for some time, and had left behind her father and Helen and six younger siblings. A lot of the money that Helen had earned, she sent back to her father to help with the hospital bills they were still paying off, or toward school fees and clothes for her siblings.

"Kind of," Helen made a face as she looked up, narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips as she thought. "I mean, yeah, she is, but...I think I really like her as well." Helen was bisexual, so her dates varied between men and woman, but all of the people that she had actually had relationships with that Clary had known about had been with girls.

"Isn't there, like, rules against that kind of thing?" Clary arched an eyebrow.

"There aren't really any rules, other than the ones that you set for yourself," Helen shrugged a shoulder as she tapped out a reply to the woman who had messaged her. "It's not like I go through an agency or anything." Clary knew  _that_  for a fact, because there had been one very messy date that Clary and Jordan had ended up having to go and pick her up, because he had shoved her against the wall and slapped her across the face, and from then Helen just started doing more thorough vetting. She'd been doing it for nearly two years now, so she seemed to know what she was doing.

"Wouldn't it be kind of weird? I don't know, actually dating someone who basically pays you for sex?" Clary tipped her head to the side and turned around on the wheely chair she had sat down in. Helen gave her a narrow eyed look and Clary rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine, they pay you for companionship or whatever, but I've seen the photos you send them and the amount of condoms you keep in your drawers at home, so we all know there's sex involved." Helen rolled her eyes again, but the edges of her lips were pulling upward in a smile, to show that she wasn't offended. "Just...Wouldn't it feel like you owe her or something? Like if you start an actual relationship?"

"I don't think so," Helen really didn't look bothered as she shrugged again and then looked back at her phone. "I mean, she has money and she likes spending it on me. Nothing wrong with that, right?" Clary hummed in agreement.

"You know, if there wasn't the whole fact that half the people you've gone out with are boring as hell—no offence—I would so get into it. I'd love to have someone buy me expensive things and tell me I have a pretty face," she said and Helen let out a laugh.

"Yeah, riding on that no offence train, babe—you don't even have a poker face when we're playing poker and your literal rent money for next week is on the table, I doubt you're gonna be able to do it when a man named Barry is telling you about his third ex-wife and why he only gets to see his kids on Christmas," Helen laughed. Clary snorted.

"Okay—to be fair!" She held up a finger as Helen kept on laughing. " _Maybe_  I gambled with my rent money, but at least I still managed to cover my portion of the rent next week! I'm responsible like that!"

"Only because of your sock money," Helen pointed out.

"But what else is sock money for?" Clary retorted and Helen nodded.

* * *

Clary had almost finished her shift when she got another message from Jace. She couldn't stop her smile. She had considered assaulting his inbox with incessant messages, demanding that he reply to her like she did with literally everyone else she text, including her mum and step-dad, but she figured that they really didn't know each other well enough at that point so maybe she shouldn't jump right down to the thirty messages in a row straight away.

**_Sorry, Clary. Was in a meeting. What type of laptop do you use now?_ **

Clary screwed up her nose, because she didn't want to talk about her shitty old laptop, which was covered in stickers that she had collected over the years, the main big one on the front of Harry Styles with a pink flower crown.

_Eh just some old one. Why are you still in meeting?! It's LATE_

Then she had to remind herself that this had been the guy who had gone to work on a  _Sunday_ , so it really shouldn't surprise her that he had work meetings until seven at night. She packed up her laptop and the papers that she had been working on and moved around the photo lab, making sure everything had been packed away after the last guy had been there after ten minutes ago. The hours changed, depending on how many people needed to use the lab, but at the moment, seven o'clock was when they were closing up, so it took Clary a little longer to make sure everything was shut off before she left the room and locked the door behind her. As she walked down the long, empty hall and pulled out her phone again, her heart beat a little faster when she saw that she had  _two_  texts.

**_All part of the charm of running a business. Haha._ **

**_What are you doing tonight?_ **

That sounded...Well, when Clary got messages like that from Michael Denton or Ryan Arnold, it was because they wanted to know if she wanted to hook up. But she had a feeling that Jace was classier than that, so she didn't reply with one of her saved tit pics that she had on file—only for when she was feeling frisky. Michael was kind of a dick and Ryan talked more than she liked, so more than half the time, she turned down their texts, either with a simple ' _Busy_ ' or just not even replying, but when she was feeling into it, she answered with the tit pics.

She wondered what Jace would say if she sent one to him.

And then she started wondering when the last time she had taken one, because she was pretty sure she had only had one nipple piercing the last time she had taken some semi-artistically shadowy selfies of her chest, some of them even featuring some lip biting, although none actually showing her whole face. She had another piercing in her nipples, one in each of them now, not just in the left one.

Maybe she needed to update them.

_Just finished work. Going home. Si and Iz will be at work so I'll probably piss off Jordan until he makes me dinner_

**_You don't cook?_ **

Clary narrowed her eyes at that. She liked the quick reply, but she didn't like the assumption.

_I cook!_

_I'm a bloody good cook!_

She was partway through her next text when a response came.

**_That wasn't mean to be an insult! Sorry if it came off that way! It was just meant to be a question. I didn't really learn to cook until after college, and even then, I pretty much lived on take out. I mean, even now I pretty much live on take out._ **

It kind of sounded like he was panicking, which...Was kind of cute. So Clary back spaced on the text that she had been typing out, which had been emphasizing again that she was a damn good cook and she cooked for the flatmates at least twice a week, but she worked late on Tuesdays, and Jordan didn't work until Friday, so why shouldn't he be the one making her dinner? She jogged down the steps of the front of the building, and it was dark outside, since it was after seven and they weren't in summer anymore, and she wondered what she should text back. But then she got another text, and she saw that it was a picture. She tapped it open.

It was a picture of two empty Chinese cartons on what looked like an impeccably tidy desk.

**_Dinner tonight._ **

Clary smiled.

_I'll cook for you sometime if you cook for me?_

She didn't have to wait long for a reply.

**_Deal._ **

If it had been some guy from college, he would definitely added the emoji with the winky face. She kind of wished that he  _had_  added a winky face, it was so much easier to read situations with emojis were involved.

Then again, he had asked her out for coffee, so that sounded like date material.

No.

It was  _definitely_  a date.

Fuck yeah, it was a date.

She had a coffee date with a cute older guy who hadn't cared that she had stolen his one and a half grand Cartier sunglasses.

Plus, she got to make out with him a little the other day, so that was pretty hot.

It only took her fifteen minutes to walk back to her flat, especially since she was kind of doing this half skip kind of thing, feeling kind of dizzy as she kept replaying in her head that  _she had a date with Jace_. There were quite a few people out on the streets, which was normal for the busy Los Angeles street. When she got back to the apartment, there was only the kitchen light on, the lounge all dark other than the light coming from their TV. Jordan was camped out on the couch, the blanket from the back of the couch draped loosely over his shoulders as he jammed his fingers down on the blue controller in his hand, and he tipped his head back to look over his shoulder as she walked in.

"Hey, cutie," Jordan called out to her.

"Hey, babes," Clary grinned, dumping down her bag and laptop on the kitchen table before walking over the couch, jumping over the back of the couch and practically landing on Jordan's lap. He elbowed her in the side and then shuffled around to push her away, and she settled down next to him with a smile. "Hey, Jord. Jord...Jord," she poked him with her finger, jabbing his knee.

"Your dinner is in the fridge. I made pasta," Jordan grinned. Clary smirked, leaning forward and smacking a kiss against his cheek before getting up to find her dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments make me happy xx


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so.....Neeeever expect these kinds of updates from me. Ever. Haha .  
> But I just finished the chapter and I'm super feeling this story soooo, here's an update?  
> Since it's just finished, it's not edited yet, sorry, guys!
> 
> 23/07/2019 - Edited

Clary didn't have to get up as early as she had the past two days, because her class wasn't until nine, but she did anyway, to do her make up a little more carefully than the sloppy eyeliner she would usually put on and went with a darker lipstick, something purple that had probably been Isabelle's at some point, and then she let her fingers rest on the Cartier sunglasses that were on top of her dresser, in front of her mirror. After a moment, she picked them up and tucked one arm in the front of the grey and white shirt she was wearing and then left the apartment. She didn't go to college with Isabelle on Wednesday's, she went with Simon, and he was always up early and even had a coffee in a semi-clean mug which made him the most accomplished adult in their flat.

"Shit," Simon raised his eyebrows when he saw her walking him with her laptop bag over one shoulder and her messenger bag over the other.

"What?" Clary made a face at him, because she had been up for an extra fucking forty-five minutes this morning and he was looking at her as though she'd gotten mascara all over the bridge of her nose.

"Uh—you don't usually wear so much make up," Simon shrugged. "But, whatever, you look good."

"Fuck yeah I do," Clary retorted, leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek and leaving a perfect dark purple lipstick mark behind.

* * *

Clary bused onto the other side of town where the building address Jace gave her was, and then had to walk the other fifteen minutes by foot. It was fine, because it was a nice day, so she slid Jace's sunglasses on, and when she caught her reflection in a passing shops glass, she was glad to see that she didn't look like a total dickhead with the glasses way too big for her face. They just kind of looked a  _little_  too big, and it sort of went with her whole outfits vibe, with her hair all curly and loose, pushed back from her face by a black band with a bow, her loose grey and white shirt and ripped skinny jeans. They were the  _good_  ripped skinny jeans as well, they'd actually been brought ripped, not the ones that she had that were just so old and worn that they  _had_  ripped. She had thought about wearing her glasses today, instead of her contacts, but then she wouldn't have been able to wear Jace's sunglasses, and she  _really_  wanted to wear those.

She got to the building and scrunched up her nose as she looked up, noting that it was taller than the buildings on either side, although one on the opposite side of the street was taller. That was an apartment building, though, so Clary wasn't sure that it counted. She went inside and the main lobby had a receptionist behind a desk, two security guards, a line of elevators and at the far side there was a wide flight of stairs. It was all white and glass and clean and there was a plant that looked like it was watered regularly and her eyebrows arched before she approached the desk.

"Hello. How can I help you?" The woman behind the counter asked, a polite smile on her face, and a blank look in her eyes, similar to the one Helen got when she was really hungry and she had to be polite to people in the photography lab. Clary took the sunglasses off and hooked them back into the neckline of her shirt again.

"I'm..." Clary looked back down at her phone, at the address that Jace gave her. "Here for Idris Communications? Floor twenty-nine?" The woman arched an eyebrow and looked over at the security guard, and Clary was beginning to wonder if maybe she was just going to need to call Jace to come down, but then she nodded and pointed to the elevator closest to her. "Thanks!" Clary flashed her a smile, but the woman had already lost interest, going back to her computer. Clary stepped into the elevator and then stopped short.

There was a plant in the fucking elevator.

Magnus had given Clary a plant for her twentieth birthday, telling her that it would teach her responsibility.

It had died three weeks after he'd given it to her.

The doors made a loud  _pinging_  noise and slid back open again and Clary made a face as she realized that she had literally just been standing there and not moving, just looking at the plant, and the elevator doors had both closed and then re-opened since she had been there. She couldn't help put poke her head back out, and the receptionist was staring directly at her.

Judging her.

Clary ducked back inside and jabbed her finger on the button for the twenty-ninth floor and stared at the plant as she whizzed upwards. At least there wasn't elevator music.

That stuff was shit.

She tilted her head to the side and reached out to touch one of the leaves, wondering if maybe the plant was a fake. She dug her finger in, trying to scratch away at the surface, and she was pretty sure it  _wasn't_  plastic when all of a sudden the doors slid open again and she tried to whip her hand away, but she also didn't really loosen her grip so she sort of...Pulled the whole branch with her and tore off the leaf.

"Oops," Clary muttered, giggling before skipping out of the elevator and dropping the leaf on the ground. This floor seemed a lot more security conscious, opening up to only one room, with sturdy frosted glass doors on either side. She walked up to the desk, and the girl behind it was younger than the woman downstairs, and rather than just looking a  _little_  judgy, she looked exactly the girls in high school that Clary went out of her way to avoid like the fucking plague.

"Can I help you?" The girl asked, and Clary was pretty sure she was about half a second away from popping bubblegum and dying tacky bright coloured streaks in her hair,  _that's_  how similar she was to the girls back in high school.

"I'm here to see Jace," Clary said, trying to sound totally even and not as though she was intimidated by the girl. She had highlighted blonde hair, and it looked as though it was  _properly_  highlighted, not the home jobs that Clary and Isabelle would have Magnus do on them. And while Magnus did an amazing job, she wasn't trying to insult his expertise at all—the other girls hair looked flawless. So did her make up. And Clary was guessing her clothes were too.

"Jace?" The girl looked as though she was trying not to smile. "Mr Herondale?" Clary shrugged a shoulder as she realized that she didn't actually know his name. "Is he expecting you?" Clary nodded and the girl still didn't look as though she believed her but she leaned forward and picked up a phone, pressing a few buttons. "Hello, Ms Roberts? This is Heidi, at the front desk,"  _Heidi's_  voice changed remarkably from her conversation with Clary to her conversation with whoever it was on the other end of the phone. "I've got somewhere here to see Mr Herondale." She looked Clary up and down, clearly holding a degree in Looking Down Her Nose At Someone While Sitting Down and Clary sighed, pulling out her phone, sending a text off to Jace.

_I'm at the front desk_

She looked back at Heidi, who was hanging up the phone, a small smile on her face, one that could come off as polite if someone as came along, but one that they both knew was snarky and self-satisfied.

"Sorry, but Mr Herondale is busy—"

"Shit, Clary, sorry!" Jace suddenly appeared, his cheeks a little flushed and Clary grinned blindingly at him. She had literally  _just_  text him. He must have run from wherever he had been the instant he had gotten the message.

That made a girl feel good, she had to admit.

"My meeting was running late," he began and Clary looked down at her phone, and saw that it was only just going quarter on one, so his meeting hadn't actually run  _that_  late. "I'm just going to go and grab my jacket, okay? You alright with waiting here?" Clary couldn't help but look back over at Heidi, whose eyes were now wide and her pretty pink and likely botoxed lips were parted as she watched the exchanged.

"Sure," Clary smiled, looking back up at Jace. "I can wait right here." Jace didn't look as though he had noticed her glance because he just smiled and started to back away, before stopping and pointing just below her chin.

"Those my glasses?" He asked her, his lips tipping up in the corners.

"Sure are, boo," Clary grinned, purposefully pulling them out from her shirt and slipping them on, not even caring that they were inside. Jace didn't seem to care either, because his smile just stretched and then he was walking away quickly, disappearing back down the hall behind the desk. Clary turned her full attention back to Heidi, who seemed all of a sudden completely engrossed in her computer screen. Jace didn't take long before he was coming back, now wearing a jacket, and he looked good.

 _Damn_  good.

His suit fit him perfectly, as though it was made for him, not just brought off the rack, and his hair was pushed back, looking a little styled but not overly done and when the cuff of his jacket and shirt slipped up a bit, she saw that expensive watch on his wrist again.

"There's a place just down the block that we can go to?" Jace said as he reached past her to press the button for the elevator. "We can go get coffee and lunch?"

"Oh my god," Clary groaned and then bounced up a little. "I haven't eaten today. I'm so down for lunch." Jace's eyebrows flew up.

"You haven't eaten today?" He asked, and he actually sounded concerned, kind of like how Luke Garroway sounded when he heard that her laptop still made weird beeping noises and occasionally just shut down completely and then she said that she  _still_  hadn't taken it into the colleges IT department. She just...Kept forgetting and it worked fine most of the time.

"Nah, Izzy ate the last muffin yesterday, Simon ate the last slices of bread for dinner last night and we had a tin of peaches but I couldn't find the can opener," Clary shrugged a shoulder as the elevator door. Jace was still looking at her, eyebrows all worried and she pursed her lips together, wondering what was wrong. "It's okay, I had pasta for dinner last night. Carbs take up a lot of room," she patted her stomach as they stepped into the elevator, Jace waiting for her to get in first. There was another man in a suit walking toward the elevator, but when he saw Jace get inside, he stopped kind of awkwardly, not getting inside. Clary raised an eyebrow, but then he was pressing the button to go to the ground floor and the doors were closing.

"Where's your can opener?" Jace asked.

"Huh?" Clary made a face as she looked at him, adjusting the glasses on her face, needing to push them back up her nose since they were a bit too big for her.

"You said that you couldn't find your can opener," Jace replied slowly, looking confused.

"Oh!" Clary grinned at him before shrugging again. "I don't know. I didn't find it. I mean, sometimes Jordan and his boyfriend do weird sex things and our kitchen stuff goes missing." Jace actually looked kinda horrified at that and Clary couldn't help but laugh. The elevator doors opened and they were on the ground floor and he held out his arm, indicating that she get off first. The woman behind the desk looked up as they went past, but Clary just ignored her. When they got out onto the busy street, Jace took a pair of sunglasses out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket— _another_  pair of Cartier ones—and slipped them on.

"This way," he nodded to the side, and then he lifted his hand from his side and pressed it gently to her lower back to guide her forward and to the left. It wasn't a firm hand, in fact there wasn't much pressure  _at all_  unfortunately, just enough for Clary to know that it was there, and she liked it. She kind of wanted to press up back against it, but she didn't.

They walked through the busy crowds, not talking because unless you were willing to raise your voice or stand really close together, it was hard to have a conversation over the buzz of noise around them.

Clary and Izzy made it work, and so did she and Simon, but Jace seemed kind of classy to do that, plus he was looking around at the shop windows and then down at his phone, which was in the hand that  _wasn't_  currently touching Clary.

She'd be down for both of them touching her.

And neither of them on her back.

Or, in particular positions, one  _could_  be splayed on her back while the other is gripping her hip and he's behind her or maybe holding her up against a wall—

"Here it is," Jace said and Clary was snapped out of her thoughts as she looked up at the little cafe on the corner of the block. It wasn't a Starbucks, but it didn't look a little mum-and-pop place that was within her budget, which meant it was probably a bit  _out_  of her budget. Especially since she didn't get paid until tomorrow night, and they might need to put more money into the pringles can so that they could buy another can opener, which was dumb, because Clary hated their money going to stupid stuff like that.

She knew it wasn't recommended, but she wondered if she could open the can of peaches for dinner tonight with the only sharp knife they had in the apartment.

"Get whatever you want," Jace was saying, and his hand dropped from her back, which was disappointing, and he finished up with whatever it was he was doing on his phone, pressing the button on the side to turn off the screen and his other hand dropped to his side as well.

"Ooh, you're paying?" Clary grinned up at Jace as she pushed the sunglasses up on top of her head. "Well, that changes things."

"You weren't going to get anything?" Jace asked, and he had that worried look again.

"I was gonna get coffee! And then..." she looked up at the blackboard behind the counter, scrunching up her nose as she considered the prices next to everything. It actually wasn't as scarily priced as she expected, but it was still expensive. "Well, I can afford a muffin? Or one of those yo-yo biscuits?" She shrugged as she looked back at Jace and he shook his head before smiling.

"Alright, well, order whatever you want, I'm paying. And I cleared my afternoon with my secretary—" he held up his phone, explaining what he had been doing on it on their way to the cafe. "So I'll take you home as well."

"Ooh, in the nice car?" Clary asked excitedly and Jace let out a short laugh.

"I guess? In my car," he shrugged a shoulder. "And we'll go to the grocery store and get you some food." Clary eyes widened and she stopped from moving up in the queue.

"Grocery store? Food?" She repeated back.

"Well, yeah," Jace said, taking a step forward in the queue and waiting for her. "You said you didn't have food—you didn't have  _breakfast_  this morning. I'm getting you some food before you go back to your apartment." Clary blinked at him, and then some old bad behind her cleared her throat pointedly and Clary sighed and moved forward to stand beside Jace again.

"I get paid tomorrow—and Jordan does to. We will get some food from the 7-Eleven and then we'll be good for the next week," Clary nudged him with her elbow, not too sure how to react to the fact that he was willing to pay for her coffee and lunch and then take her grocery shopping.

"7-Eleven? That's where you get your weekly groceries?" Jace asked, sounding a little disbelieving.

"Yeah," Clary shrugged.

"We're gonna go to Whole Foods," Jace told her and then they were stepping forward again and they were at the counter and Clary was still blinking up at him, because as far as she knew, only parents shopped at Whole Foods, and Jace was already placing his order. She guessed  _parents_  and adults, but generally those things were interchangeable. All she knew for certain was that unless she was with her mum or Luke, she had  _never_  shopped at Whole Foods. "Clary?" Jace tilted his head to the side as he looked at her, a small smile on his face as he waited patiently for her.

Unlike the woman behind the counter waiting for her order, who looked as though Clary was the bane of her existence.

"Oh, shit," Clary cleared her throat as she quickly joined Jace at the counter and skimmed her eyes over the menu. "Can I get a mocha with two pumps of hazelnut syrup? And a..." she chewed down on her bottom lip as she kept looking at the blackboard, trying to find what she wanted to eat, and then shrugged when she couldn't decide between two things. "The honey-mustard chicken sandwich and a slice of the passionfruit cheesecake?"

"Full cream or skim?" The woman asked in a bored voice.

"Ew—full," Clary answered and there was a quiet laugh from Jace before he reached forward to the pay for their order. They moved to the side with the other waiting customers, and Clary looked around the cafe for a spare table. There was one at the far end, and she nudged Jace's side, nodding at the table so that he knew where she was going before leaving him waiting for their food and drinks and moving to the end of the cafe where the table was, to make sure it was reserved. It wasn't too long of a wait, and Jace came over and put down their drinks and food and sat opposite her. "Thanks," she told him with a smile.

"It's no problem, Clary," Jace said, his eyes warm as he looked over at her, and she was glad that he had taken off his sunglasses as well, so that she could see his eyes, which were kind of like liquid gold, and made her insides feel all warm and tingly.

"And honestly—we don't need to go to Whole Foods. Like—I'm all in for you giving me a ride back to my apartment, because anything not to take the bus or uber or whatever is awesome, but—you  _don't_  have to get me groceries," Clary assured him as she picked up her coffee and took a sip. Then she made a face and reached for the sugar packets in the middle of the table in a dainty glass cup with pretty flowers painted around the rim and dumped two of them.

"Clary," Jace said quietly but firmly. "I'm going to give you a lift back to your apartment, but first we're going to get you groceries, okay? And not from 7-Eleven." Clary felt like maybe she should protest, but then she caught a glimpse of his watch again, and the Cartier sunglasses on his head, and then she had  _another_  pair of Cartier sunglasses on  _her_  head, and if he could afford all that shit and buy her cheesecake and coffee and sandwiches and wanted to buy her groceries, then why was she complaining about it.

"Okay," she shrugged a shoulder, but even she heard the slightly uncertain tone to her voice.

"Clary?" Jace murmured and she lifted her eyes from where she had been stirring her sugar into her coffee and met his, and it made her stomach feel even softer than before and she bit down on the bottom corner of her lower lip to stop herself from being super embarrassing and  _whimpering out loud_. "It's fine. It's honestly fine." She narrowed her eyes a little at him, and then he narrowed his back at hers playfully and it made her giggle.

"Okay," she said again, and she sounded more confident this time. "But we have to get a bag of marshmallows."

"And a can opener."

"Oh yeah!" Clary laughed and Jace smiled at her. "And a can opener."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you guys think, pleeeease, I adore your comments :)  
> And/or hit me up on my socials x
> 
> Twitter: CalamitySerene  
> Tumblr: SereneCalamity


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is gonna be another one of these months you get two updates in month, so...*throws internet cookies*

It was surprisingly easy to just sit there and talk to Jace.

Clary had wondered if maybe it would get awkward, because he was old and had a proper job and money and owned a fancy ass car and lived in a super nice house, that they wouldn't have much to talk about, but they didn't.

He asked about her photography and she asked about his job, and he told her about how different New York had been from Los Angeles and how glad he was to move back and she told him about how she had lived anywhere but Los Angeles, although she had bounced around through a few places. And he had gotten some berry and white chocolate slice thing that looked  _amazing_ , and he could obviously see her eyeing it up because he pushed his plate in her direction and just laughed when she took off a massive chunk with her fork.

"Alright, so we need to get my car. Then we'll get groceries and I'll you take you back to your apartment before I got back to work," Jace said once they were done.

"You're gonna go back to work after you dropped me off?" Clary asked, tilting her head to the side and Jace's gaze followed her red curls as they fell over her shoulder before looking back up at her, eyes oddly soft.

"Yeah," he replied.

"But you said you cleared your afternoon," Clary pointed out. Because why the  _fuck_  would anyone work when they didn't have to? He'd said before that it was  _his_  company, which meant he probably got paid and shit whether or not he was there or not. If she could choose to get paid and  _not_  to go to work, she would totally be down for that.

"I've still got other things to do," Jace told her with a small smile on his face. "There's always a lot to do."

"Sounds shit," Clary made a face and Jace let out a surprised laugh, eyes dancing as a grin spread across his face.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is," he admitted and Clary grinned back at him, just glad that she was the one who had made him laugh. "But it sort of comes with the territory."

"Wouldn't know," Clary shrugged. "I've never owned a company before." Jace smiled at her as an old memory shifted to the surface. "Although...I wouldn't go as far as to say that I don't have any business knowledge. There was a lemonade and fruit stand that I ran a  _very_  successfully for three summers in a row." He arched an eyebrow and his smile shifted to something adorable and soft.

"What'd you buy with all of your profits?" Jace asked.

"A skateboard and a whole lot of a candy," Clary replied instantly and Jace laughed again.

"You still own the skateboard?" Jace asked.

"Damn straight I do," Clary grinned. "Although, I've had to buy another one since then, a bigger one, but I still have it, back at my mum and Luke's." Jace grinned again and Clary just felt nice and stupid and warm.

So, she got to drive in Jace's car, this time not drunk and not totally hungover, so it was even better than the first two times. It smelt really good, better than Simon's car and the other guys that Clary's had been in, even better than Luke's, because he always had boxes of work stuff in the back that would be in and out of storage which meant there was usually this musty sort of smell. It was clean as well, no stickiness or anything, or even dust, and Clary ran her fingers along the shiny surface in front of her before looking over at Jace.

"You alright?" Jace asked as he glanced over at her before focusing back on the road, and it wasn't as though she was going to tell him that she was marveling at the fact that there was no dust.

"Yup," Clary replied, popping the 'p' and then looking down at her phone. She had a couple of snapchats, one of them from Michael, and they only ever really interacted when one of them wanted to hook up, so she didn't even bother opening that one, pressing on the one from Magnus and then from Izzy. It didn't take long for them to get to a Whole Foods, and Jace found a park not too far from the entrance, and then they were getting out and he was getting a trolley as though they were normal, proper adults and doing their normal, proper adult shopping and she kind of just trailed in behind him.

"You want to lead the way?" Jace prompted her once they got inside, standing in to the fruit and vegetable section. Clary looked up at him, pursing her lips for a moment before nodding and then striding forward.

She wasn't completely incompetent when it came to grocery shopping, she used to go on proper shopping trips with her mum on a weekly basis and sometimes she did when she went home for weekends or holidays, she just didn't go on a regular basis.

She licked her lips as she her fingers skipped over to the apples, scanning the bags for the reddest ones and then putting it in the trolley. She couldn't help but glance up at Jace and he had this sort of approving look on his face, and it was  _stupid_  because she didn't need his approval—this was  _her_  shopping after all—but it kind of made her feel better. So then she got bananas and fresh peaches—none of this _in the can_  kind of shit—and she got some vegetables because she wasn't working tonight so she could make dinner with actual food rather than the pasta with chopped up chicken patties that they had originally planned.

"Oooh!" Clary's eyes widened as she slammed her hands down on the side of the trolley and looked back at Jace, who looked taken aback by her outburst. "I'm gonna make meatballs for dinner." He relaxed almost straight away and nodded.

"You know what you need?" He asked, probably assuming that she had  _some_  type of food at home.

She didn't.

She  _really_  hadn't been kidding about there being nothing.

"I've got the seasoning?" She attempted with a shrug and a sheepish grin.

"Like the herbs?" Jace's eyebrows pulled together.

"Like the salt and pepper? Except probably not the pepper?" She replied with a squint and Jace stared at her for a moment before letting out another laugh, sounding like it came up from his stomach and was genuine and sweet, not at all like he was laughing  _at_  her, which she was fine with.

"Alright, let's get going," he told her, his voice warm, and Clary couldn't help her smile in response, skipping along at his side.

They got everything that she needed for meatballs, and Jace got the proper brand pasta and put it in the trolley, not even weighing up the prices and going for the knock off brand that was all misshaped styles of pasta. Then he got two more bags and kept on going. He let her lead the way, but he made sure to pick things out as well, things that Clary wouldn't really think to get herself; like museli bars and little boxes of herbs and garlic ailoi in a fancy jar and a few packets of biscuits. He got her deli meat and fancy bread and didn't judge her when she dumped the biggest bag of marshmellows in the trolley, or when she grabbed a  _second_  bag, because she might as well capitalize on this generosity while it was available to her.

"Just one last thing..." Jace mumbled under his breath as they went down the last aisle with assorted items, and he pulled a can opener off one of the hooks.

Clary beamed up at him.

When they got up to the check outs, Clary just started piling things onto the conveyor belt, and Jace didn't stop her, but she noticed that there was some kind of method to the items that he was pulling out of the trolley and putting down on the belt. The fruit was all together, the boxed items were together...It was all properly organised and it made her shrug, because she really didn't care if the chicken got packed next to the muffins.

They were wrapped up already, right?

She hadn't died of cross-contamination yet, and if it was going to happen, then at least she would have had the meatballs first, because she wouldn't try the muffins until tomorrow.

She'd had a good life, albeit a bit short.

She could deal with it.

She wouldn't have to pay off her student loans, so...That was a plus if she really had to find one.

"Clary?" Jace tilted his head to the side as he looked at her and Clary hummed in response as she looked back at him. "Can you move up a bit?" She realized that she had been standing in the same spot for a while now, while the cashier had swiped most of their items through and bagged them, and was probably going to expect payment some time soon.

Payment she  _definitely_  didn't have, given it was payday tomorrow and she had about...Six dollars in her account, when she had checked this morning.

But Jace swiped a shiny black credit card through the machine and then he was packing everything back into the trolley and then they were walking out. Clary couldn't help that she was  _still skipping_  beside him, and her hair was bouncing up and down around her shoulders and the hem of her shirt kept flipping up a little and she felt really stupidly happy.

About groceries.

And  _that_  was a scary thought, because that was definitely an adult thing to be excited about and that wasn't really something that she wanted to think about right now.

What she  _was_  willing to think about was the fact she was going to make fresh meatballs with proper herbs and spices and sauce from a jar and not the tubs where she had to peel back the top and fancy-ass pasta.

It was gonna be amazing.

When they were driving out of the store parking lot, Clary was looking around the centre console and found an aux cord tucked into the little slot where the lighter thing usually was in and she unwound it, glancing over at Jace. He looked over at her, and so obviously knew what she was doing and didn't seem to care, so she plugged it into her phone and flicked through her Spotify—or, more correctly,  _Simon's_  Spotify account, because he paid the Spotify and she paid the Netflix and Jordan paid the—

"Put on whatever you want," Jace said quietly as they came to a stop at a red light and Clary realized that she had just been scrolling through the playlists and not choosing anything.

"Right," Clary mumbled, her thumb swiping over the screen, to the last played artists.

Liquid Jesus.

Not one of hers.

Clary rolled her upper lip and moved on.

Luke Combs.

Nope—that was definitely Simon.

Amy Shark.

There we go, that was fucking better.

Shawn Mendes, Yungblud, The Pretty Reckless, Bastille...She kept on swiping until she found 5 Seconds Of Summer, tapping into their main playlist and then just selecting Shuffle Play since they weren't all that far from her apartment. She had specific playlists as well, but she figured if Jace could handle her enormous hard-on for boy bands, then he was actually pretty much shaping up to be the perfect guy.

"I'm pretty sure Iz was obsessed with these guys," Jace commented. "She was heart broken when they broke up."

"They haven't broken up!" Clary cried, looking over at Jace with a horrified expression. He looked a little bewildered.

"I thought they...Were all doing their own separate thing now? After that first guy left—Iz's favourite?" Jace said, looking almost tentative. "That guy who was dating that model..."

"Ew, Iz's favourite was Zayn?" Clary rolled her eyes. "Typical. But—no, I mean—I'm guessing you're talking about One Direction, that's not them. This is 5SOS. They're amazing and still together. Although 5SOS did open for 1D at one stage..." she hummed out loud and Jace just shook his head, smiling before looking back at the road. They made it through three songs—including one of their old ones that Clary still adored but could admit was super cheesy—and Jace still had a small smile on his face and wasn't complaining, so she figured that she could forgive him for mixing up the two boy bands.

"Hm," Jace hummed out as they reached the apartment building and he looked around for parking. There was parking underneath their apartment building, but Clary didn't have the swipe card to get into the basement—one was in Simon's car and the other was in their apartment—so it wasn't as though they could go down there and use one of the parking spaces there. Jace found a park around the corner from the front doors of her apartment building and they got out, pulling the bags out of the back. Jace loaded most of them onto his arms, so Clary only had one to carry, and she lead the way into their building.

"Are you sure you don't want me to carry anything else?" Clary asked over her shoulder as she jabbed the button for the elevator a couple of times, waiting for one of them to come down to the ground floor.

"I've got it," Jace replied easily, not looking as though he was struggling with the five bags on his arms. An elevator door opened and they got in, and it was nowhere near as fancy as the elevators at Jace's apartment building. There was shitty twinkling music and there was no plant in the corner, and there were some weird stains on the floor and scratches on the walls and door. Once they got to their floor, Jace stuck his foot purposefully in the door, holding them open while Clary walked past him, then following after her, and her apartment was empty as she went inside. "Does everyone else have class now?" Jace asked as he walked over to the cluttered kitchen table and put the shopping bags down.

"Simon and Iz do," Clary said as she put her own bag down next to his, then put her keys, phone and wallet down on the bench. "Jordan is...Out. I don't know. Or maybe he's here and in his room?" She glanced down the hallway, and the door of the room that he shared with Simon was shut, but that was pretty common for them. "He's at his boyfriends sometimes, but they fight a lot."

"But still do weird sex things that involve kitchen utensils?" Jace asked with an amused smile and Clary grinned.

"Half the time I think they just fight to have the make up sex," she replied as she started to unpack the grocery bags. "It can get pretty loud. Simon usually ends up on the couch or sharing mine or Izzy's bed..." she got distracted as she realized that Jace had added some more fresh fruit and vegetables than she had seen, and there were also some instant mixes for pancakes, cupcakes and a lemon cake. They were the expensive instant mixes too, and she appreciated that he hadn't just randomly got her all of the ingredients, because at least this way, they could sit in the cupboard for a while, until a special occasion, and they didn't have to use them right away.

"Where did you want these?" Jace asked her, holding up the bread items and Clary waved a hand over her shoulder to one of the cupboards while she started putting things in the fridge. There was some beer in the fridge—Jordan's brand, not Simon's—and there was a bottle of mayonnaise and a few cheese slices still in their plastic wrappers. All in all, it looked pretty sad, but as she started adding the bottle of milk, and the yoghurt, and the fruit and vegetables, it started looking like a fully functional fridge—probably for the first time since it had been moved into their apartment. "And this," Jace held out the can opener, still in it's cardboard and plastic packaging. "Is there somewhere safe that you can put it? Where Jordan and his boyfriend can't find it?" He had a wry smile on his face and it was  _weird_ , because Jace wasn't the type of guy who had to worry about where his can opener was.

She'd been in his house and she'd seen his car, and he seemed to be  _extra_  clean and orderly, even for an adult.

He probably knew exactly what was in the drawers in his kitchen, and he didn't have room mates who have weird sex lives that correlated directly to not being able to open a can of peaches.

But he was...Smiling and looked happy about the fact she was the complete opposite of him.

Clary wasn't even really thinking before she was taking a few steps to cross the kitchen and was reaching up and pressing a kiss to Jace's cheek. Admittedly, she would rather be kissing him  _somewhere else_ , especially since she knew that he was so good  _at_  kissing, but she decided to stick with something safe right now. When Clary moved back, Jace was smiling at her, and it made her stomach dip as she rested back on her feet.

"Did you want to do this again?" Jace asked.

"Grocery shop?" Clary couldn't help but laugh and Jace rolled his eyes, and it made him look younger, and it was ridiculously endearing, even though she liked the fact that he was older than her.

"We can grocery shop again, yes," Jace nodded his head, and Clary had been joking but the fact that he had agreed made her eyes widen in surprise and the smile drop her face as she realized that he was implying that he would buy her groceries  _again_. "But I meant go out for food. Maybe for dinner?" Clary's eyes lit up.

"Yeah?" She grinned. "Yeah," she repeated, and jerked her head in a nod, and Jace smiled wide at her.

"Does Saturday night work?" He asked. Clary probably had plans already on Saturday, but it would just be to go out drinking, which is what she did every Saturday. This was a once in a life time thing.

Or twice in a life time, if their coffee date today counted as an actual date.

But either way, she wasn't going to pass it up.

"Yeah, absolutely," Clary nodded again. Jace's face was soft and sweet and he lifted his hand to touch her cheek, gently gliding his fingers over her cheekbone. His touch was so light that Clary could only  _just_  feel it, but her eyelashes still fluttered slightly and her lips parted just a little. When she refocused her eyes on Jace, he wasn't smiling anymore, and his teeth were pressing gently into his lower lip. She watched as he swallowed hard and he stepped back, hand falling to his side.

"Do you have anywhere that you would prefer to go?" Jace asked as he turned back to the kitchen table and finished emptying the plastic bags.

"Uh..." Clary really just wanted him to  _come back_ and touch her face again.

Or kiss her.

She really wasn't fussy.

Either one would make her happy.

And honestly—the fanciest food that she went and brought was when they had enough money to scrape together to go to the roast shop across the road and then put it onto plates and use actual knives and forks to eat it instead of using plastic ones and eating right out of the container.

"You pick," she went with and Jace nodded.

"Do you like Thai? Chinese? Italian?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Clary smirked and Jace laughed.

"Alright, really narrows down our options," he replied and she just shrugged.

"And don't forget that wherever we go, it has to have a good place to get dessert. Or we could go to a dessert bar. Either way, dessert is the most important part of the meal and if you screw up on that, I really don't think I can go out on another date with you," the words were out before she could stop them, and even though Jace was  _technically_  asking her out on a date, saying it out loud made it sound a whole lot louder.

But Jace just smiled over at her as he picked up his keys from the table.

"Dessert is the most important, and you like Thai, Chinese and Italian," he recited back. "I'll find somewhere for us to go, and I'll text you and let you know what time I can get us booked in?"

"Perfect," Clary beamed and she kind of wanted to say  _you're perfect_  but she didn't.

"Thanks for meeting me today, Clary," Jace said, his voice _so sincere_  that it made her heart thump harder in her chest.

"I—course," Clary didn't really know what to say, because she had thanked him a few times on the way home for buying her groceries, and really, she was the one that got the better end of the deal here.

"Bye, Clary," Jace told her softly, giving her one last smile before opening the front door and disappearing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter!

"What you got there?" Helen poked her nose over Clary's shoulder to have a look into the plastic container that Clary had just gotten out of the microwave in the tiny make-shift kitchen that the employees could use. The term  _employees_  was used pretty loosely as well, given most of them were students, and there was a dark room and a computer lab in the same building as them, and the people who worked in those used the same kitchenette. "Shit, that smells good."

"Jace took me shopping yesterday," Clary announced proudly as she stabbed her into the pesto chicken pasta that she had cooked up last night with Simon— _after_  she had made meatballs for all of their dinner—so that all of them had substantial lunches to take to class.

For probably the first time since they started college.

" _Food_  shopping?" Helen asked as she reached into Clary's container with her bloody  _fingers_ , and grabbed at a slice of red capsicum and pulled it out, shoving it her mouth and moaning. "Holy shit, this is amazing."

"I know, right? I'm a damn good cook when I actually have food in the house," Clary stated proudly, but then picked up her fork and threatened to stab Helen's fingers as she reached in to try an pick up a piece of pasta. "Don't you fucking dare. This is the best food I've eaten in two months, since I was back home with mum and Luke." Helen arched an eyebrow, but she pulled her hand back.

Wise decision, if Clary did say so herself.

"Anyway, like I said before— _food_  shopping? That's a very specific kind of shopping," Helen rested her ass on the help desk next to Clary.

"Is it?" Clary mumbled through a mouthful of food that she had just shoved between her lips. "I would think something like  _lingerie_  shopping would be a very specific kind of shopping," she continued talking around the pasta, and clearly she had been living with Simon and Jordan for too long, because she never used to talk with her mouth full when she had been living back at home.

"It  _is_. But that's—that's a  _different_  type of lingerie shopping," Helen said. "Food shopping is domestic as fuck. It's, like...A proper relationship type of thing." Clary's head jerked at that, and the fork clattered out of her hand and onto the desk. Helen frowned as she looked down and she seemed to realize her mistake.

Because  _no_.

There was no  _proper relationship type of thing._

It wouldn't be fucking fair if people were classing them as a proper relationship type of thing—her  _first_  ever proper relationship thing—when she hadn't even gotten to have sex with Jace, and only to have kissed him yet.

So  _no_.

Not to say there never would be, maybe, far into the future, at some point,  _after_  they had had a lot of sex that she  _knew_  was going to be mind blowing, but they had literally only kissed because of a dumb Kiss Cam and gone out for coffee once and now Helen was saying that it sounded like they were in a proper relationship type of thing because Jace had brought her some  _food_? Jace just seemed like a nice guy! Who did nice things! Like buying poor college students food!

"Clary?" Helen said tentatively and Clary blinked at the blonde. "You haven't said anything...For about three whole minutes now." Clary cleared her throat and looked down at the desk, making a face when she saw some of the pesto had spilled off her fork and onto the desk top. She glanced around, looking for a tissue or a napkin to wipe up the desk with.

"There's no  _proper relationship type of thing_  or anything, Helen," Clary mumbled and Helen shrugged.

"Okay," she replied easily, as though putting those ideas in Clary's head was just easily swept aside and forgotten about. Clary rolled her eyes as she found a crumpled tissue under one of the books that was piled up on the edge of the desk and wiped up the mess. When she threw it toward the rubbish bin, Helen was still watching her with a small smile. "So when are seeing your not-relationship guy again?"

"Saturday," Clary replied, pointedly ignoring her little jibe.

"Well, that sounds like fun," Helen grinned. "You'll have to let me know how your date goes." Clary narrowed her eyes a little bit, wondering if Helen meant anything else, but she just kept on grinning at her, and so Clary let it go. "Anyway, I only just came by because I left a book here on my shift yesterday," the blonde eyed Clary carefully for a moment before lunging forward and grabbing a piece of pesto chicken with her fingers before dancing backwards a few steps and laughing as Clary picked her fork up again and gave a threatening jab in her direction. "See ya, Clary!" She picked up a book from one of the tables, the one that she must have left there during her shift yesterday, and was then leaving and letting the door slam shut behind her.

Clary couldn't help but frown after her.

It wasn't that she had any type of  _issue_  with a relationship, it was just that she really liked Jace _a lot_  already and she didn't want to rush anything.

Except sex.

She would be really keen to rush sex.

They didn't even have to go full on, right _in there_  sex, it could just be kissing and mostly clothed actions that lead to orgasms that were only partly satisfying. She'd be happy with that, because she knew that it would be good with Jace.

She settled back into her chair with her plastic container of pasta and fork and almost grumpily finished her pesto pasta.

* * *

Clary didn't have any classes on Friday, which was why Friday was the absolute best week day, and she stayed in bed until after she had heard all her roommates leave, including Jordan, who didn't have class until eleven. And then for some reason, she decided to get up and do some cleaning.

It wasn't as if their apartment was an absolute  _tip_  or anything, but they didn't exactly clean the place regularly. They attempted to have a cleaning schedule, which worked well enough to get the dishes clean and the washing down and the bathroom  _not_  absolutely disgusting, but there was still a lot to be desired. Simon usually did any of the extra cleaning, like the vacuum cleaner that they had got cheap because it only turned on half the time and the piping was so short that everyone but Clary had to hunch forward while using it, or dusting behind the TV or wiping along the window sills.

She turned a Hey Violet playlist up as she connected it to the speaker and started in the kitchen. Jordan and Simon had done the dishes last night after she and Isabelle had made dinner, and the boys didn't do a  _bad_  job, but they also didn't wipe around the sink and the drying rack once they were done, and they didn't take out any food that got trapped in the plug hole, since they didn't have a waste disposal unit in their sink, just leaving it there. Clary climbed up on the bench to pull things out of the cupboards and put them on the bench so that she could wipe down inside the cupboards, something that she was pretty sure hadn't been done since they had moved in, and honestly, time seemed to fade away.

It was surprising how therapeutic cleaning was.

She remembered her mum saying that when she was younger, and later she could think about that and make a face about how  _adult_  that must make her, but at the time, it was kind of nice.

She shifted through playlists as she worked, moving on from Hey Violet to Eminem to Miley Cyrus to Niall Horan until the front door was opening and Jordan was stumbling in with his boyfriend, their arms wrapped around each other and their faces smushed together. Clary was in the lounge now, having finished in the kitchen, and she looked up with an arched eyebrow. Jordan slammed the door behind him with a kick of his foot and then him and Lambert Connell stumbled forward a bit more before Jordan all of a sudden jerked away, sticking his nose in the air.

"What the—" he broke off as he saw Clary in the lounge, crouched down beside the entertainment unit, their DVD's and playstation games all pulled out as she wiped down the shelves. "It smells really  _clean_  in here."

"Yeah. Coz I've been  _cleaning_ ," Clary waved her dirty paper towel over her head exaggeratedly. Lambert raised a pierced eyebrow at her and she grinned over at him. It was actually kind of funny, the way Jordan and Lambert had originally been introduced. He was a year older than Clary, and had been an apprentice at a tattoo place that also did piercings. Clary and Izzy had gone in to get piercings, and Clary had walked out with Lamberts phone number, and the next week they all met up at a bar to go dancing and drinking with their fake IDs. Clary had been completely ready for a fun hook up with the dark haired man, but then him and Jordan had met, and they had been tripping over each other ever since. Clary didn't resent either of them for it, her and Lambert were friends now and he and Jordan were happy with the thing that they had going on, even if it was super on and off.

"Do you...Want help?" Jordan winced as he asked the question, and with a quick glance down, Clary smirked, because it was  _obvious_  that Jordan had been hoping to take care of something  _else_ with Lamberts help.

"You go take care of your own issues," Clary waved a hand at the two of them with a grin and then leaned over to turn her music up louder, because they could be  _loud_ , and then went back to cleaning. She had finished with the entertainment unit and was ripping off some more paper towels when she heard her phone buzz from a text, and she reached over to pick it up, a grin spreading across her face when she saw a message from Jace.

**_Hi, Clary. I just wanted to check that everything was still okay for tomorrow night?_ **

Of  _course_ , it was fucking alright.

She was pretty sure that if he cancelled on her, she was going to throw a tantrum.

_YES!_

She couldn't help but stare down at her phone, waiting for a reply to come. But then a few minutes went by, and nothing came and she grumbled under her breath and put her phone back down and went to pick up the paper towel and the cleaning spray when her phone buzzed again.

**_I just wanted to check before I made us a booking. I'll pick you up at six-thirty?_ **

As far as excuses went for not replying to texts  _immediately_ , making a booking for their date tomorrow night was a pretty good one.

_Thats okay. Do I have to dress fancy? Where are we going_

_**Ninos. It's a beachfront restaurant.** _

Uh, yes, she knew where  _Ninos_  was. Luke had taken her mum there last year for their anniversary—he'd had to book nearly six months in advance to make sure that they had a table. She'd spent an hour looking at the menu the night that they had gone out to dinner, and she had practically drooled all over the keyboard of her laptop.

But it had also been incredibly expensive.

As in—a meal there would probably cost more than what she earned in two months.

She'd known that wherever they were going to go was going to cost a bit more money than she expected, and so she had compromised with herself to take some of her sock money out so that she would have the money if she needed it, but she would have to take out almost  _all_  of it to pay for dinner there. And to buy something to wear? She didn't have shit to wear there!

She  _assumed_  he was paying, but then she also didn't just want to make that assumption. It was a  _date_ , but she hadn't actually been on that many dates, per se, and so she guessed that he was going to be paying, but...She scrunched up her nose.

She was still staring down at her phone, thumb hovering over the screen as her brain fumbled for something to say when another text came, and then a third one.

**_Clary? Did you change your mind about Italian food?_ **

**_We could go somewhere else, I can cancel the reservation._ **

Clary clicked her teeth together nervously as she thought about her response, which she was going to have to get together very quickly. She blew out through her lips and just went with the truth.

_It sounds amazing, but I don't know if I can afford it_

She sent off the reply before she could second guess it, and then a moment later, her phone was ringing. There was no picture that came up, because she didn't have one assigned to his contact, but she was also kinda frozen because  _who the fuck_  called anymore?

Old people!

Old people called!

Literally the only time she called people was when she was drunk, or if she really had to call Helen or Izzy to vent over something that had happened, although even then, she generally video called them instead, rather than  _call_ -call. Or her mum. But even then, the only reason she rang her mum was because she  _tried_  texting her mum, and then her mum just  _rang_   _her_  back, so she might as well just cut out the middle shit and just ring her straight away. At least Luke could hold a conversation by text.

Sure,  _fine_ , she would call other people  _sometimes_ , but not really!

"Oh,  _fuck_!" Clary groaned as she realized that she had been thinking for so long that she hadn't answered the call and it had rung out, so she just looked like a fucking idiot, staring at the missed call icon on her screen. She was about to try and call him back when her phone lit up again, with Jace calling her again, and she grinned, feeling a little loosened up knowing that he wanted to talk to her so badly that he was calling her back a second time. She swiped her thumb over the screen and lifted her phone to her ear, quickly answering the call. "Hi!" She chirped.

"Hey, um—are you busy?" Jace asked, probably wondering why she had totally blanked and not answered his call, even though it was  _obvious_  that she had her phone on her because they had been texting.

"No, no—just, uh—cleaning," she shrugged a shoulder and made a face at her reflection in the TV.

"Okay," he took an obvious breath over the phone, and Clary arched an eyebrow, not saying anything, because she was pretty awkward on the phone and so she settled for making another face at her reflection. "Uh—the money isn't a thing, Clary. Don't worry about that. I asked you out, I chose the place, I'm paying for dinner." Clary pursed her lips together for a moment and then nodded.

"Okay, that's fine then," she agreed.

She'd literally  _just_  been joking with Helen the other day about how she wanted someone to buy her expensive things and say she had a pretty face and...Now she had just had to work on him telling her that she was pretty.

That would be a good next step.

Or, dinner was the next step, so...Maybe if she wasn't going to use some of her sock money to pay for dinner, she could use it to pay something  _really_  good to wear to dinner.

"Clary?" Jace was asking and she blinked.

"Shit, what?" She asked.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay with still going out. You sound kind of distracted?" Jace questioned and Clary felt bad.

"Sorry, I'm just...I really like cleaning?" She attempted, grasping at straws for a reason as to why she wasn't paying attention to the gorgeous older guy on the other end of the phone who was taking her out on a proper  _date_  tomorrow night, to a fancy ass restaurant, and was going to pay for it.

"Really?" Jace let out a laugh that sounded full-bellied and beautiful.

"No," Clary responded honestly and Jace laughed again, not in a way that he was laughing  _at_  her, but like he genuinely found her funny.

Which, yeah, point to him, because she was  _great_  and had her funny moments.

"So picking you up at six-thirty works?" Jace clarified and Clary nodded, even as she verbally answered.

"Sounds good," she replied and then winced. "Oh, yeah—I also feel as though I should warn you that my roommates will probably be here tomorrow? And probably drunk, since it's Saturday night. I mean...They might not be, but they  _probably_  will be." She thought about last Saturday night, and then the Saturday nights for the past, say, three months, and they had been drunk almost all of them, even if they didn't go out and club those nights, they would generally be drunk in their apartment.

"That doesn't bother me, Clary," Jace replied before hesitantly continuing. "Unless that's a problem for you?"

"No! I mean—well, one of my roommates is your cousin, so I should probably tell her that I'm going out with you..." Clary trailed off and tilted her head to the side.

Izzy had seemed totally fine when her and Jace had kissed, so...She was guessing this wasn't going to be a problem?

Maybe?

Back in high school, some of the girls she had been friends with had had crushes on her brother, but nothing had ever happened with any of them. She wasn't sure how she would have felt about that, but Jonathan Morgenstern had always been a total player, so she would have been looking out for  _them_ , more than being protective of her own brother.

"I actually thought you might have mentioned it to her, since you live together. But I can give her a call, if you want?" Jace suggested and Clary smirked and rolled her eyes at the fact that he was so eager to make  _another_  call.

"No, no, it's okay. I'll talk to her," Clary told him. "Uh—so I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Jace's voice was softer now. "I'll see you tomorrow." Clary didn't take her phone away from her ear straight away, chewing down on her bottom lip and taking in a deep breath and ending the call.

Then she quickly sent a quick message out in her Facebook message group with Helen and Izzy.

_I need to go dress shoppinggggg. TONIGHT_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think :)
> 
> Twitter: CalamitySerene  
> Tumblr: SereneCalamity


	7. Chapter 7

"I can't believe you waited until  _now_  to tell me that your date tonight is with my cousin," Izzy snorted from where she was stretched out on Clary's unmade bed, the top sheet and blankets shoved down to the bottom of the bed in a tangled mess and one of Izzy's hands tucked under Clary's pillow. "We were literally helping you pick out  _thongs_  for this date last night!"

"Would you still have helped me pick out the lacy red underwear if you knew that it was your cousin I was trying to get to take them off?" Clary asked, not looking back over her shoulder or at Izzy's reflection in the mirror, completely focused on perfecting her smoky eye.

"Well..." Izzy hummed and Clary actually paused then, because Izzy was one of her _best friends_ , and as exciting as this  _thing_  was with Jace, Izzy was still more important. Clary put down the eyeshadow brush that she had been using and turned around in the seat she had dragged from the kitchen and put down in front of the mirror in her room, looking back at the dark haired girl on her bed.

"I was going to tell you the other day, when we went out for coffee, but...I mean, you were asleep and being a bitch," Clary smiled tentatively and was relieved when Izzy snorted. "And I didn't know if we were going to go out again." Izzy regarded her for a moment before shrugging.

"It's fine, Clary," Izzy said, and she  _did_  sound fine. Clary had known Izzy for a while now, and she felt as though she could read her well. Izzy had tells when things weren't okay, just like everyone else. "And, I mean, if he's happy to keep buying us food, then I'm happy for you to date him. Oh—and if you guys are happy and shit," she added as afterthought and Clary snorted.

"Wow.  _Thanks_ ," she drawled before turning back around to carry on with her make up, feeling better than she had before.

A  _lot_  better.

She had thought about telling Izzy last night, when they went out with Helen in response to her SOS text to find a dress,  _buuuut_  if she had really not liked the idea and had gotten pissed at Clary, then that would have put Helen in a super awkward position with them, so Clary hadn't done that.

So the plan had been to do it this morning, but Izzy had left to go and hook up with someone last night and she hadn't gotten home until a few hours ago, and then she had napped until about twenty minutes ago, when she had come in here and rudely taken over Clary's bed to watch her get changed.

"Ow!" Clary hissed as she tried to get the eyeliner  _just right_  and just succeeded in stabbing herself in the eye. "I fucking  _fail_  at being a woman!" She announced and Izzy laughed from the bed, getting up and coming over to stand behind Clary.

"Let me," she said. "And your eye-shadow game is strong, we all know that, you just suck at any type of fancy eyeliner work."

Yes.

They were all fucking aware of that.

Izzy could manage a near-perfect winged eyeliner on her first try, whereas Clary just looked like a five year old with a permanent marker going crazy on her face.

"Okay, I need the cotton swab..." Izzy mumbled and she dabbed the swap in some of the make up remover that Clary always  _knew_  to have readily available whenever she was going to attempt shit with eyeliner, and then started her fix up job. It only took a few minutes, and when Clary turned back to the mirror, her eyeliner looked absolutely  _perfect_ , because Izzy was an absolute queen.

"You're brilliant," Clary stated as she picked up a tube of lipstick.

"Nuh-uh—this one, it'll look better with your underwear, once he gets you out of your dress," Izzy smirked as she picked up another lipstick, a deep red one, that looked almost purplish-black. The lingerie that she was going with was no bra, because the dress had an inbuilt one, and unlike her more  _endowed_ friends, she could get away without wearing a bra if her dress was tight enough to support her. The underwear was a lacy red high waisted thong that had cost a stupid amount for a tiny scrap of material, but that both Helen and Izzy had agreed looked amazing, accentuating her waist and ass.

"You usually into helping people get laid by your cousin?" Clary smirked and Izzy rolled her eyes.

"Okay,  _please_  stop putting all of that together like that," she scrunched up her nose. "I think I can deal with this if it's just—ya know, all separate pieces. You're going on dates with someone. You're having sex with someone. Oh, hey, you're seeing my cousin, cool! But like—you don't need to be telling me that you're having  _sex_  with  _my cousin_ , okay?" Clary couldn't help but laugh.

"Right. Good to know that your boundaries are crystal clear," she replied.

"Eh," Izzy didn't seem bothered as she moved to the plastic rack in Clary's corner which served as a wardrobe, since the only room with an  _actual_  wardrobe was in the room that Simon and Jordan shared. "I feel good about this dress," she stated as she took out the dress that they had picked up last night, the original reason for the shopping emergency.

"That's because it was your number one pick," Clary retorted. "And because you know you have half the rights to it." Izzy was taller and curvier than Clary, but things like dresses or tee-shirts tended to fit them both if it was the right kind of fabric. They had decided shortly after they had moved in together that they would occasionally go halves on clothes because clothes were  _expensive_  but they both wanted new things.

Or, new for them.

They usually came from thrift stores because if you looked for long enough, there was some good stuff there, and it wasn't as expensive as getting things brand new.

"Please don't have sex in this dress," Izzy made a face. "I mean, generally we don't have that rule with our clothes because throw it through the wash and it's all good, but...I feel that I might care a bit more if I know that it was  _Jace_  who had sex with you in this dress." She mimed throwing up and Clary grinned devilishly.

" _You're_  the one who brought up me having sex with your cousin that time.  _Not me._ " Izzy pulled the fingers at her and that was that.

Jace had seemed pretty insistent on coming by and picking Clary up, and by doing that, he had said that he would come up and get her, he'd actually seemed offended when she had messaged him half an hour ago telling him  _text when you're downstairs_. It felt a bit  _weird_ , especially since everyone in the flat was  _there_ , and they were all very aware of what was going on and there were grins and shoves happening and wiggling eyebrows. Clary sniffed at them and tried to act as though she wasn't freaking out, even though she was checking her make up on the selfie-mode on her camera and tugging at the hem of her dress.

"Oh my  _god_ , you look _hot as shit_ , stop freaking out," Jordan called out to her from where he was slumped on the couch, raising an eyebrow at her as she looked over at him.

"Well, maybe I should have gone for something a bit classier or whatever, right? Like...He's old and stuff, so maybe this is too much..." Clary scrunched up her nose as she looked down at her dress and Simon snorted while Izzy rolled her eyes.

"I don't know if you should start the evening by saying he's  _old_ ," Simon stated. "And even if he was, like,  _fifty_ , that dress is killer."

"And he's not  _that_  much older than us," Izzy pointed out. "We're twenty-one, he's thirty-two, I mean...Eleven years isn't that much."

"When he was middle school, you were only just being born," Jordan stated and all three roommates turned to look at him. "What?! I'm just saying!" Izzy pulled a cushion out from behind her back and threw it at him. "What?!"

" _Anyway_ ," Izzy continued pointedly. "That dress isn't slutty or anything, especially since you're wearing that jacket. You look great, and he's gonna think so too."

And, well,  _no shit_ , Clarry was  _aware_  that she looked great, she'd seen her reflection multiple times in the past hour as she had been getting ready, and then in the past ten minutes since she had actually finished, but she still felt stupidly nervous. The dress was a deep red, tight and sleeveless, that gathered around her neck and left her shoulders and arms bare, with black designs around the torso, and a full skirt that ended a few inches above her knees, with a pair of high black heels.

Part of her had actually wondered if the dress was too  _cute_  when she had tried it on in the store, but Helen and Izzy had insisted that it wouldn't be, especially once her face and hair was done and she was wearing heels, and they had been right. It was definitely more  _sexy_  than  _cute_  now.

There was a knock at the front door, just as Clary was beginning to wonder if she should swap handbags to the glittery small one that she usually used when she went to gigs and concerts, and she made a face as she looked at the door, nose wrinkling and lips pulling back over her teeth.

"Merp," she uttered and Jordan snorted on the couch.

"Should I give him the dad talk?" Simon grinned as he threw his playstation controller and made a move to get up off the couch.

"Pretty sure he's old enough to  _be_  our dad," Jordan grinned and Clary shot him a dark look before there was a laugh from Izzy. Simon was still moving to the front door and Clary was about to tell him to  _fuck off_ , because she really had no idea what he was going to come out with when he greeted Jace on the other side of the door, but Simon was already pulling open the door and it would be too fucking obvious now yelling at him, so she just let it happen.

And Jace looked  _edible_.

Like— _shit_.

"Hey," Simon greeted him, acting like a normal fucking human being, while Clary felt as though she was stuck to the spot.

"Hi, Simon," Jace replied, voice smooth and easy, and not sounding anywhere near as nervous as Clary was feeling. His eyes searched over Simon's shoulder, in the lounge first, where Izzy and Jordan were, and then toward the kitchen, where Clary was, and his face softened when he saw her, although there was something about his eyes that seemed to get a bit darker.

That was a good sign.

A  _very_  good sign.

Hopefully a sign that she was going to end up out of her dress and the sexy red thong.

"Hi, Clary," Jace's voice was about an octave lower, which did stupid things to the part of her that was being  _hidden_  by the sexy red thong and Clary blinked, because she had done a lot of stupid things in front of her roommates before—including a lot of stupid things  _with_  her roommates—but she wasn't going to fling herself at the beautiful blonde and demand that he take her to her tiny bedroom and have his way with her right then and there.

"Si!" Jordan called from where he was still on the couch. "Stop hogging the door! Let the man in, or let the woman out!" Simon rolled his eyes as he stepped to the side, and Clary shot a thankful look over at Jordan before taking a few steps forward and then stopping short when she saw what was in Jace's hand.

Flowers.

He brought her  _flowers_.

No one had ever brought her flowers.

Like, Simon had once picked her flowers when they were kids and he had a crush on her, but they were from the neighbours garden and they were all torn and ripped and there were clumps of dirt hanging from them.

But these were proper fucking  _flowers_.

All colourful and wrapped in ribbon and beautiful.

"Oh wow," Clary blinked as he extended the flowers out to her, offering them to her. Clary took them and couldn't help but smush her nose into the middle of the flowers, probably the  _opposite_  of elegant and whatever else the other froofy, fancy-ass girls that Jace usually dated would do, but they looked so pretty and she wanted to know if they smelt as good as they looked. "Thank you," Clary said as she lifted her head and looked back at Jace, and he was smiling at her. "Oh shit," she realized as she looked over her shoulder. "I don't think we have a vase..."

"I'll sort it out!" Izzy called out, getting up from where she was on the arm chair and grinning at Jace before taking the flowers from Clary's hands. "You guys  _go_!" She shoved at Clary's shoulder and Jace held out his hand to her.

"Are you ready?" He asked and Clary was about to answer when Izzy did for her.

"Yes—she is! Just go!"

"Fucking hell," Clary couldn't help but mutter and roll her eyes and she heard Jace laugh under his breath as they stepped out into the hallway and Clary pulled the door shut behind her. "Sorry about them," she scrunched up her nose and it was weird that she felt the need to apologise for her friends. Because she  _never_  did. They were awesome and if people didn't think that, then clearly they were people that Clary didn't want in her life, but she just felt nervous.

It was different from when she had been getting ready with Izzy, she actually felt on  _edge_  right now.

It was crap.

"Clary?" Jace murmured and she looked up, blinking at the expectant look on his face, as though he had said her name a couple of times now. "Are you alright?"

"I just feel weirdly nervous right now," Clary stated, not bothering to act coy about it, because it honestly had taken her aback and she felt a bit off balance.

"Is it...Is it because of where we're going?" Jace asked, looking a little hesitant and Clary pressed her lips together as she thought about going to the fancy restaurant on the beachfront with Jace in his suit that definitely cost three times as much as what her entire outfit—including shoes and bag—cost, and in his car that looked as though it should only be driven by movie stars. She hadn't  _really_  thought about it too much, actually, not until the last half an hour, because up until that point most of her concern was on her make up and hair, even yesterday after their phone call, when she had gone out shopping with Helen and Izzy, and she hadn't thought much  _further_  than after getting dressed.

Until now.

"Maybe?" Clary cringed. "I don't know?"

"Did you...Okay, how about this?" Jace tilted his head to the side and smiled. "You said that dessert was the most important part of the meal to you, right?"

"Of course," Clary frowned at the phrasing of the question, because it kind of sounded as though dessert  _wasn't_  the most important part of the meal to him, which would be all kinds of wrong.

"I found this dessert bar as well, where we could go. How about we go there first and see how it goes, and if you're still feeling a bit uncertain about the restaurant, we can find some pizza parlor to go to?" Jace suggested and Clary blinked at him.

Honestly, she would just be really happy to go back to his place now and let him take her out of the dress.

"That sounds perfect," Clary stated, and it was like that knot that had tied itself in her chest—that she hadn't even recognized before Jace had shown up—instantly started to loosen in her chest. "Do I get a kiss first?" She asked, and she  _must_  have been feeling a  _little_  better at least because the question came out flirty and it made Jace blink and then laugh, caught off guard before he leaned in, his hand coming up to cup curve around the side of her face for a moment before he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

It was chaste and sweet and  _not enough_  but it would have to do for now.

"Ready?" Jace asked for a smile, looking more relaxed that he had the first time he had asked the question, holding out his hands, fingers spread a bit, leaving the pefect spaces for Clary to slide her fingers between.

"Ready," Clary nodded her head and slipped her hand into his.

Jace's car looked beautiful as usual parked at the curb, and once they got inside, he didn't have any complaints as Clary picked up the aux cord and made a move to plug her phone in. She didn't go with her boy bands this time, since Jace had already rolled with it last time and had no complaints, instead just tapping into an album by The 1975 and letting it play quietly as they drove through the city. It was quiet, but not in an awkward way that it was with some people, so Clary was okay with that, and she liked watching Jace work the gears as they came to stop at a red light, and then accelerated smoothly through when they switched to green.

His hands were big and his fingers were long.

It was putting a lot of ideas in her head.

A lot.

The dessert bar that Jace had picked out wasn't a fancy place like  _Nino's_ , which surprised Clary a bit and calmed her down even more, even if she did feel a bit overdressed once they got inside. But Jace was dressed up even fancier than she was, and there were a couple of girls in there who looked as though they must be on their way to some event because they were all dolled up in long dresses and high hair as well.

"Okaaaay," Clary hummed out.

"What's up?" Jace had an amused look on his face as he moved to stand next to her, obviously already have decided on what he was going to pick.

"I can't decide on a slice of the banana and peach cake, or a slice of a cherry pie," Clary said as she glanced between the two desserts. "Fuck it, I'm gonna do eenie-meenie-miney-moe," she shrugged and there was a laugh from Jace.

" _Or_ , as adorable as that would be to watch, I could just get you both," Jace put a hand on her waist and steered her toward the counter. Clary's eyebrows lifted at the offer, but she wasn't going to argue, and Jace's big hand on her waist felt nice, warm through the thin material of her dress.

"Hi!" The girl behind the counter was big smiles and wandering eyes as she looked between Jace and Clary.

Clary  _may_  have taken half a step closer to Jace,  _just_  in case the girl thought for half a second that they weren't together.

Because they  _definitely_  were.

"Can we get a slice of the banana and peach cake, the cherry pie and..." he trailed off and looked back into the cabinet. "And the double chocolate cake?"

"Boring," Clary coughed under her breath and Jace shot her a cheeky glance before looking back at the girl behind the counter and smiling.

"All to take away?" She asked in a peppy voice.

"Yes, thank you," Jace replied, and his hand fell from her waist so that he could pull his wallet out of his pocket and slide out his credit card, but almost as soon as it was gone it was returning, pressing gently against her waist and fingers curving over her hip a little. Clary liked the way it felt just a  _touch_  possessive, but not enough to be annoying, and she let herself move a bit closer again, as Jace paid and then awkwardly shuffled his credit card back into his wallet with only one hand, and then put it into his pocket on the other side this time. The worker moved away to get their dessert and Jace half turned to Clary, resting his hand on the counter top, and his eyes were soft as they looked down at her, soft and gold. "How are you feeling?" He asked and Clary wrinkled her nose as she looked up at him, face confused. "Before...You were feeling a bit off?"

And  _that_  was fucking embarrassing.

Clary had almost suppressed the memory of the nerves getting on top of her when they had first left her apartment, and then it all came rushing back and she felt like an idiot, because she  _never_  felt nervous around guys or when she was going on dates and Jace was lovely and he had brought her flowers and everything and then she almost had a weird breakdown just outside her front door.

"I'm totally fine," Clary told Jace as the girl came back with their food, handing over a paper bag and flashing a smile that Jace returning politely, although it was clear his attention was fully on Clary as he put slight pressure on her waist, and they moved on from the counter, walking toward the door.

"I'm just as happy to go to a pizza place!" Jace told her with a grin. "Pizza is great!"

"Damn right pizza is great, you're never going to hear me denying that," Clary agreed with a few determined nods. "But I was promised  _Nino's_ , so I want  _Nino's_." Jace's smile grew, and Clary's heart beat stupidly fast in her chest, so instead of thinking about that, she hip checked him playfully and then snatched the bag of desserts of his hands, skipping off in front of him toward where his car was parked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, obviously I didn't update last month. My bad. I'm in a pretty shitty spot, to be honest, mentally and physically and I've just got a lot going on right now. I'm still dealing with the abrupt loss of a family member and the fall out of that on my family and recently my husband has had a colleague take his life, which has brought up a lot for him. We're going to be okay, we're dealing with things, but I just need to take a breath right now. When I am in front of my computer and I'm actually focused enough to write, I'm not sticking to the schedules that I had before and I'm just writing what I really feel like which unfortunately hasn't been these stories. So I'm just...Gonna take a step back for a bit.
> 
> You guys are all beautiful, and I'll be back soon, I just need a bit of a breather to re-centre myself.
> 
> Since updating last, it has been World Coming Out Day and World Mental Health Day and I just wanted to say to anyone dealing with mental health issues and anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, whether you are out and loud or still processing things internally, you are all beautiful and deserve love and kindness. Just because I'm going to be away for a little bit, doesn't mean I'm unreachable, feel free to message me on my socials or on here if anyone ever wants to just chat, even if it's just about movies or songs, we all need to look after ourselves first, and then one another.
> 
> Much love xx
> 
> Tumblr: SereneCalamity  
> Twitter: CalamitySerene


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, beauties :)

Clary was  _very_  glad that she had gone out and gotten a new dress for the date tonight, because she was pretty sure nothing else in her closet would have been up to standard for  _Nino's_. In fact, she was pretty sure even her  _new_  dress wasn't up to standard, but Jace was sitting opposite her, eyes practically glued on hers as though she was the only important thing in the whole room, and it was fucking electric.

The servers were attentive and quick and the food service than pretty much anywhere else Clary had ever been, although, to be totally fair, most of the places she went to her shoes stuck to the floor from all the grease and oil.

It got a little awkward when Jace ordered a bottle of wine for the table and the girl in her crisp dark red and black uniform turned toward Clary—probably for the first time since they had sat down, actually, most of the focus on Jace since it was clear that he was the one most comfortable in this space—and asked to see her ID.

Clary handed it over and met the girls eyes defiantly as she looked between the piece of plastic and then Clary, and then back down at the ID. So  _maybe_  Clary had been hungover the day before she had gotten the photo taken for her ID, and  _maybe_  she'd also been letting Helen's friend who was going through beauty school dye her hair so it was a tacky black the week of the photo, and  _maybe_  she was naturally small for her age so she understood having to do a second take, but she had a feeling that by the third look up, the girl was just trying to rub it in.

"Is there a problem?" Jace asked, voice sounded a little terse, which was weirdly attractive, and that prompted the server to quickly give the ID back and flash a smile and assure them that she would have the bottle of wine brought over shortly and be back to take their order. Clary tucked her ID away, back in her clutch and then looked across at Jace, who was smiling over at her.

"So," Clary stated.

"So," Jace responded easily.

"This place is nice," Clary looked around, and she was glad that they had gotten a table near the back, tucked away from all the bustle.

"Yeah," Jace nodded. "I've only been here a couple of times, but it's always been good." Because of  _course_  he had come here before—Clary could literally only come here because someone else was footing the bill, but this was probably just a casual stop for him. "I take it things went well with Izzy, then?" There was a small smile on his face and Clary felt so much more at ease than what she had expected, even though she had technically  _expected_  to feel at ease? Because she had had a good time with him before and that was why she was here in the first place? So why was she surprised?

"Yeah, she did," Clary nodded, taking a sip from the iced water in front of her. "She just said that we couldn't have sex in this dress, since it's one of our shared dresses." Jace's eyes widened at that and he blinked at her in surprise, and Clary couldn't help but let out a laugh as she reached out to pick up her glass of water and take a sip.

"Right..." Jace said slowly, picking up his own glass and drinking from it a lot slower than Clary had. Clary wasn't sure what she was expecting when sex was brought up for the first time, but she just wanted to get it off her chest, make sure he knew that it was on the table.

Because it definitely was.

Hell,  _she_  wanted to be on the table, right here, right now if he was willing.

"How has work been? How's Helen?" Jace asked as he recovered quite quickly, putting down his glass but leaving his hand on the table so that his fingers were gently resting in her space on the table. But Clary couldn't help but feel her eyebrows pull together as she looked back up at Jace.

"You remember me mentioning Helen?" She couldn't help but ask.

"Of course," Jace smiled at her easily, not looking offended. "She sounds important to you." There was a stupid fluttery feeling in her stomach at that. She was pretty sure she had only mentioned Helen once or twice, generally when Jace was messaging her while she was at work, and it wasn't as though she was as close to Helen as she was with Izzy, Simon and Jordan, but she was still a good friend.

"Yeah...She is," Clary couldn't help but smile, and then the waitress was coming back with the bottle of wine, flashing a big smile at Jace and ignoring Clary again, even as she was pouring their glasses. Clary arched an eyebrow as the waitress stepped back and then glanced between them quickly before her gaze settled back on Jace.

"Are you ready to order?" She asked them and Jace looked over at Clary, who made a face and picked up the menu.

To be totally honest, looking at the menu was purely a facade, because she had gone online and looked through the menu at least six times since Jace had said that this was where he was going to bring her, and she had decided on her dinner  _long_  in advance.

"I'm ready if you are," Clary smiled brightly over at Jace and he nodded, placing his order first. Jace got a fancy sounding marinara and Clary got the  _costolette di agnello_ , and then the waitress was leaving them again. Clary picked up her wine glass and took a sizable mouthful, which she really shouldn't have done, because this was  _decent_  red wine, and it was a bit of an assault on her senses, and she swallowed like a champ, because she had years of practice, and then looked over at Jace again.

"So?" He prompted gently, not looking bothered by waiting. "Work? Helen?"

"Oh, right!" Clary's stomach did that stupid fluttering thing again because he sounded so genuinely interested in her even though his life  _had_  to be so much more fun. "Well—me and Helen saw someone watching furry porn in the labs the other day?" Clary snorted in a very unladylike manner and then she froze for a second, because she was in a  _nice as fuck_ _restaurant_  and  _she had just brought up furry porn_. Her eyes flicked up to Jace, who was sitting opposite her—looking all fancy and rich in his fitted suit—and he was holding his glass of wine in his big hand with his thick fingers and he was  _laughing_.

Thank  _fuck_.

Most of her nerves from earlier had disappeared, but in that moment, she actually felt them all disappear.

Things just felt easy.

Jace loved  _Star Wars_ , which thanks to Simon and Jordan, Clary had seen every single one of the original six movies three times over and all of the new ones  _and_  the new show with the adorable baby Yoda, so Clary could keep up with any conversation he wanted to have on that front.

She nearly left when he admitted he'd never seen an episode of  _RuPaul Drags Race_ , and he clearly saw his mistake because his eyes widened at the horror on her face, but then when he admitted that he had watched  _The Great British Bake Off_  religiously, she decided to settle back in her seat.

"You're on thin ice, though," she grumbled and Jace smiled across at her, eyes all sparkly, as though she was the most charming thing in the world.

Which she  _was_.

The food was brought out and it was  _amazing_ , the best thing that Clary had eaten in  _forever_ , and she was practically orgasming over her plate, not realizing how loud she was being until she looked over at Jace and the way he had a forkful of food halfway to his mouth and was staring at her with dark eyes.

Clary couldn't help but lick her lips slowly as they held eye contact, and her stomach did flips and her heart fluttered stupidly in her chest, and Jace was the first one to break their gaze, looking down at their food. Clary couldn't help but stretch her legs out a little under the table, and her ankle pressed against Jace's leg as she braced the heel of her shoe against the ground. She felt him tense for a moment, then his eyes flicked up again, a smile pulling at his lips, before he tipped his leg to the side a bit so that he was returning the pressure.

Clary grinned as she went back to her ridiculously priced meal.

It turned out that Jace preferred dogs to cats but he wasn't home enough for it to be fair for him to have a dog of his own. Sad as all hell, but understandable. Clary and her friends couldn't have pets because of their apartment rules, but if they were allowed to, she would  _one hundred percent_  have a cat.

He loved travelling, and it seemed as though he had been  _everywhere_  that Clary wanted to go, although most of the time it had been because of work. Boring as shit. Although it made her grin and giggle into her expensive wine when he said that maybe he could take her next time he had to go somewhere for work.

He had lived in New York for the past five years but before that had grown up in Los Angeles and been based there. So they had that in common, since Clary had been here her whole life, her mum and Luke only moving after she had moved out and Luke had gotten a promotion.

The last concert that he had been to was Elton John—and not one of the farewell tours that he was on now, but his  _Greatest Hits Tour_ , which was when Clary was thirteen and she didn't even want to think about what age he was, so  _that_  was something. The last concert Clary had gone to was Yungblud at an underground club with Jordan, and they'd gotten so drunk that Izzy had sent snapchats to everyone of the pair of them crying over how brilliant the artist had been.

Maybe things should have been awkward, since this was only the second time that they were probably spending time together alone, but it wasn't.

Jace looked at her with a smile and glittering eyes as though he was interested in everything that she had to say, and he was  _funny_  and made her laugh and he looked damn good doing it.

Their dinner plates were taken away and they were offered the dessert menu, which Jace looked over at Clary for, and she rolled her eyes.

"We already  _got_  dessert," she reminded him.

"Yeah, but we got that to takeaway," Jace smiled over at her. "You could get one now, and then have that one tomorrow."

"Or I could have it when I get home. There's no law against having two desserts, Jace," Clary replied as she pointed her wine glass at him and Jace's smile just grew, the smile lines in his face deepening.

"We'll get those menus, thank you," he said, looking back up at their waitress, and she nodded as she passed them over, her attention once again on Jace, rather than Clary. But Clary really didn't care, because her leg had been pushed up against Jace's under the table all night, and he had reached over at one point and traced his fingers gently against the back of her hand and she was wearing an amazing red thong under her dress that made her feel like a total babe, so she wasn't intimidated by the waitress who seemed intent on ignoring her.

They decided on a tiramisu to share, although Jace blatantly let Clary have more than half, and Clary couldn't help but briefly wonder if she was the type of girl who wanted to be fed a bit of the dessert off a lovers fork in the cutesy way.

She wasn't.

She had her own fork and Jace scooped off smaller mouthfuls than she wanted.

Even after they had finished their dessert, and were down to the last dregs of the wine bottle that Jace had ordered for the table, they were still talking, and Clary's cheeks were flushed red, from the company and the flirting and the alcohol. It was going on quarter to twelve when Clary looked down at her phone and saw that she had  _multiple_  messages from her flatmates, as well as Helen blowing up the group chat with Izzy trying to find out how the date was going and then she finally looked around the restaurant and blinked when she saw that there were only a few other people still there.

"Oh, shit," she giggled. "I didn't realize how late it had gotten." Jace glanced around and his eyebrows lifted, and it was nice to know that he hadn't been looking around either, that he hadn't noticed how late it had gotten.

She was good company and  _clearly_  he was aware of that.

"I should probably go up and pay," Jace said. "And then I'll get you home, okay?" He leaned back in his chair, and for the first time in several hours, they were no longer touching, and Clary's ankle immediately felt cold.

And he was taking her  _home_?

Jace was already standing up and taking his jacket off the back of his seat where he had hung it an hour or so ago when he had warmed up, and Clary couldn't help but pout as she did the same. He smiled over at her and then stopped when he saw the way her bottom lip was sticking out, and he arched an eyebrow, his smile turning to something else, something a little darker that made her thighs want to clench together and have her flipping up her dress and showing him the fucking sexy, expensive underwear.

"Come on, love," Jace's voice was soft as he reached out an arm, and Clary blinked up at him.

He  _clearly_  saw that she wanted to  _not_  go home.

Or, she wanted to go to a home, just not  _hers_.

She wanted to go to  _his_.

And let him have his way with her—because she damn well knew that it was going to be amazing.

Although!

She did like being called  _love_.

Clary took his arm and let him lead the way up to the counter. He paid quickly, with a wave of his credit card, and Clary didn't even get a glimpse at the price. She was pretty sure she would have had a heart attack even if she did, though, so that was probably for the best. Jace gave her arm a squeeze as he lead the way out of the restaurant, stepping in front of her and letting go of her arm as he pushed open the door and waited for her to exit in front of him.

There was a tension in the car on the drive home, and Clary didn't even make a fuss about plugging her phone into the radio even though she generally couldn't  _stand_  the radio playing it's ads and the stupid talk back between hosts, and she was pretty sure Jace saw the way her knees were pressed together and her thighs clenched a few times, because there was an  _ache_  between her legs.

An ache that it didn't seem as though Jace was going to be fucking relieving, given they were making a very direct route back to her apartment building.

When he parked opposite her building and turned off the car, the lights all flicking off and leaving them in relative darkness, other than the lights that were coming through the windows in tiny puddles from the street lamps, and even though Clary was  _aware_  that there were cars passing them on the street outside and there were at least three different types of music being played in the shops and buildings around them, but it honestly felt like they were in their own little bubble, and the only thing that Clary was listening to was the sound of their breathing.

"I'll walk you up," Jace said quietly, reaching out and brushing a few fingers against her bare knee, and Clary tried to ignore the sparks that skittered over her skin. His smile seemed darker, and Clary wasn't sure if it was because of the shadows, but it made her stomach dip and twirl like she was on a tilt-a-whirl. Jace got out of the car first, and as Clary was reaching for the door handle, Jace was already quickly walking around to the passenger side of the car and grabbing the door, opening it for, and Clary flashed a smile up at him once she was steady in her heels.

"You know there's still time, right?" Clary prompted him with a raise of her eyebrows. Jace tilted his head to the side as he looked down at her.

"Time for what?" He asked softly and Clary narrowed her eyes because he knew what she meant.

"To go back to your place," she said, and  _maybe_  her voice came out a touch sulky. Jace's lips stretched in another smile, and they were out of the car and right underneath a lamp now, so she could  _see_  that there was some darker intent in the smile, but he still didn't lunge at her mouth and  _devour_  her like she wanted him to.

"Come on, love," Jace reached down and took her hand, thick fingers sliding between hers. "Let's get you upstairs." Clary huffed a bit under her breath because this wasn't  _fair_.

She couldn't remember the last time she had been on an actual date, because that's not how people operated when they were in college—at least not to  _this_  degree—but she was pretty sure that most actual dates resulted in some sex? At least some under the shirt action? Even if it was just some fooling around in the car?

She really wanted to fool around with Jace!

They took the elevator up to her floor and walked slowly toward her apartment door, not saying anything. There was loud music coming from the corner apartment, but there always was on Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes on the Thursday as well, and then there was also the faint smell of weed coming from the apartment door opposite Clary's, definitely nowhere near as fancy as what Jace was probably used to, but she liked it. It was theirs. They reached the door and came to a natural stop, although neither of them let go of the others hand.

"So..." Clary murmured, glancing over at Jace from underneath her thick eyelashes. If it was some random college guy, she'd invite him in and not care that she only had a single bed with a Hannah Montana duvet cover since her other one needed to be washed.

But she really didn't want  _that_ , even though she didn't want this to be over.

"So," Jace smiled down at her, and the slyness from earlier was gone, which was both good  _and_  bad, but his hand was still tightly wrapped around hers. "When can I see you again?" Clary blinked up at him, and then her cheeks began to heat up. She could feel the tips of her ears turning hot and Jace's smile widened, looking completely endeared.

Rightfully so. She was adorable.

Even when her body was being all embarassing.

"Do I get a kiss goodnight?" Clary asked, clearing her throat so it didn't come out quite as high pitched as it initially would have.

"Do you want a kiss goodnight?" Jace's smile was a teasing one, which just wasn't fucking fair.

"Course I do," her lower lip stuck out a little in a pout, and Jace let out a laugh under his breath before he was leaning in, and even in the heels that she was wearing, he towered over her. He crowded her in, body warm and smelling subtly of cologne, and she hadn't realized that she had taken a few steps back until her back came in contact with the wall beside her door, and the thing was— _he didn't stop moving_. He kept crowding her, surrounding her, his thighs pinning hers to the wall, one hand gripping hers tightly while the other moved to press to her hip, a thumb firm against the bone while the fingers curled around her hip. His nose brushed against hers, once, twice, and Clary's breath caught in her throat as his lips  _finally_  grazed hers.

She had thought that their first kiss had been good.

This one left it in the dust.

Jace kissed her firmly, intently, thoroughly, first with his lips molding over hers and letting go of her hand to come up to her chin and held her face in the way that he wanted it, and her whole body felt as though went boneless under his touches. When she felt the tip of his tongue touch to her upper lip, a shiver went through her and she couldn't stop her gasp as her mouth opened, letting him in. Jace's tongue slipped inside without hesitation and Clary felt heat pool in the pit of her stomach and Jace's hands on her face and on her hip felt like a brand that was burning into her skin and her hands came up to grab at his shoulders, because it honestly felt as though her legs were only seconds away from giving out from underneath her. His tongue smoothed over hers and then flicked up at the roof of her mouth before she felt his teeth gently press against her plump lower lip and another shiver went through her.

When Jace pulled back, it was slowly, and his hands were still on her, and he gently leaned his forehead against hers as he waited for her to catch her breath.

"Shit," Clary whined out a little, tugging at his jacket with her fingers and Jace huffed out a laugh under his breath as he pulled back more to look at her face, cupping her jaw and gently running his thumb over her bottom lip.

"Thank you for letting me take you out tonight, love," Jace said, and his voice was deep and a little raspy, and it made Clary squeeze her thighs together, feeling the lace of her thong stretch tighter between her legs. "When can I see you again?"

"Um..." Clary cleared her throat again and she was glad that was being held up between the wall and Jace's body or she might be melting in a puddle on the ground at the sound of Jace's voice, which was clearly deeper and raspier because of how the kiss had effected him, and that was fucking hot. "Anytime you want."  _That_  was clearly the right answer, because she got another blinding smile, and then Jace was leaning in again.

This time, though, she only got a brief kiss on the corner of her mouth, but it still made her knees weak.

"I'll message you in the morning," he murmured and Clary nodded before Jace was stepping back, hands slowing falling back to her side.

He waited until she fumbled in her bag for her keys and unlocked her front door.

He was maybe still waiting as she shut her door and let out a squeal of happiness.

She didn't care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr: SereneCalamity  
> Twitter: CalamitySerene

**Author's Note:**

> Drop a comment, let's chat x
> 
> Tumblr: SereneCalamity  
> Twitter: CalamitySerene


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